Concern
grows about health risks to children amid parents’ fears that allowing them to
play outside will expose them to radiation
The Guardian, Justin McCurry in Tokyo, 27 January 2015
Children bow to greet their nursery school teacher as they get into a school bus heading to kindergarten in Koriyama, west of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Photograph: Toru Hanai/Reuters |
Children
from Fukushima are the most obese in Japan, due in part to fears among parents
that allowing them to play outside will expose them to harmful levels of
radiation, a survey has found.
Almost four
years after the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant,
concern is growing about the long-term health risks to inactive children from
the prefecture.
According
to Japanese media, an education ministry survey of schoolchildren aged five to
17 found that 15.07% of nine-year-olds in Fukushima prefecture were 20% heavier
than the standard weight for their age – the level at which a child is
considered clinically obese.
The rate
was dramatically higher than the national average of 8.14% and the highest of
Japan’s 47 prefectures, or counties. Fukushima children aged six, seven, 11, 12
and 13 were also heavier than their contemporaries, the study found.
Children
from the Tohoku region of northern Japan, where Fukushima is located, tend to
be fatter than their peers because they are forced to spend long periods inside
during the bitterly cold winters.
But the
disparity has grown in the four years since the nuclear disaster due to
radiation fears, even in areas of the prefecture where levels are well below
those considered safe, and lifestyle changes associated with living in
temporary housing.
While most
schools in the region have eased restrictions on playing outside, many children
have become accustomed to staying indoors and have lost interest in physical
exercise, education officials said.
The
disaster on 11 March 2011 forced the evacuation of 150,000 residents from a
20km radius around the Fukushima plant – a move some health experts have
credited with preventing exposure to dangerous levels of radiation. Local
authorities also quickly banned the sale of milk, consumption of which was
blamed for juvenile cancers observed in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster
25 years earlier.
Comments by
parents and teachers in Fukushima suggest that many children, even those living
in areas where radiation levels are below government safety limits, are
spending more time at home after school and during weekends and holidays than
they did before the disaster.
A rise in the incidence of thyroid cancer among children who lived near the plant at the
time of the disaster has sparked a debate about the possible health effects of
Fukushima’s radioactive fallout.
Just over
100 people aged 18 or under at the time of the disaster had been diagnosed with
confirmed or suspected thyroid cancer by last summer.
They are
among 370,000 children and adolescents in the prefecture who will be regularly
screened throughout their lives for the illness, which can be caused by
radiation exposure and is more prevalent in the young.
Japanese
health officials, however, have so far ruled out a connection between the
elevated cancer rate and the Fukushima meltdown.
They point
out that thyroid cancer cases did not emerge until about three to four years
after the Chernobyl disaster. In addition, they say the rate in Fukushima is
significantly higher than the national average because of the large number of
people being tested and the use of hypersensitive ultrasound, which can detect
the tiniest lesions.
Thyroid
cancer normally affects one to two people per million among 10 to 14-year-olds
in Japan, a rate far lower than observed in Fukushima, although tests there
apply to people aged up to 18.
Japanese farmers bring a cow to the front of the agriculture
ministry in Tokyo, on June 20, 2014 |
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