Thyroid Cancer Confirmed on 30 Children in Fukushima

[yuiyoshida]

The March 2011 meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, caused by cultural and human mistakes, brought extensive human suffering: evacuations, emotional trauma and premature deaths, disrupted jobs and schooling. Now it seems that it also brought radiation-related illness among the general public, something that few expected.

The reactors spewed just a tenth of the radiation emitted by the Chernobyl disaster, winds blew much of that out to sea, and evacuations were swift. Yet one wave of illness has been linked to the disaster, cancer.

In a survey that began in April 2014 to check the impact of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis, 30 children have so far been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and 27 are suspected of having the disease, a prefectural government panel said Monday.

Most of them were thought to be problem free when their thyroid glands were checked during the first round of the survey conducted over a three-year period through March 2014.


The first survey covered about 300,000 children who were under the age of 18 and living in the northeastern Japan prefecture when the nuclear plant disaster was triggered by a huge earthquake and subsequent tsunami in March 2011.

https://mikadoshimbun.com/News/2016/51-Thyroid-Cancer-Confirmed-Children-Fukushima.html

[Octafish]

1. Heartbreaking.

Tragic, also, considering the "scientists" were telling us there's nothing to worry about.

http://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/fukushima-child-thyroid-issue.html

Thank you for the heads-up, yuiyoshida!

[malaise]

3. Same whores for cash who don't acknowledge climate change

Bought and sold by corporations

[Octafish]

4. The Think Tank Crew is something to behold...

Keep tabs via SourceWatch:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/SourceWatch

and Little Sister - the antidote to Big Brother:

http://littlesis.org/

Otherwise, War Inc will keep on living and the planet and People are free to keep dying.

[malaise]

2. But but but

there were folks here attacking other DUers who saw this coming - it was all so safe

[gratuitous]

5. They're still around

May even show up in this thread to tell us all how it would be statistically totally expected that this many kids would get thyroid cancer (within one or two standard deviations), and that rushing to blame poor put-upon TEPCO is just woo.

Or maybe they won't show up after all. Which wouldn't break my heart.

[trotsky]

7. I'd like to know what *is* "statistically expected."

Are there other areas in Japan, not exposed to the fallout from Fukushima, where the children are all universally scanned for thyroid cancer? What are the rates in those areas?

No one on either "side" can really take much from this without knowing what it compares to. I don't know - can you inform me?

[Bernardo de La Paz]

10. So would I. Lots jumping to conclusions already despite the warning against that in the article. nt

[Bernardo de La Paz]

11. Since you are so smart, you tell us what is statistically expected. . . nt

[trotsky]

6. What are the thyroid cancer rates of areas far away from Fukushima?

Apples to apples is always a good comparison, right? Most children elsewhere wouldn't be diagnosed unless they were symptomatic. Children near Fukushima have been universally screened.

It's good to understand statistics, I think. Helps prevent fear and confusion and misinformation.

[phazed0]

8. There is an undeniable link between radiation and thyroid cancers

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17891238

10 fold increases at Chernobyl... pretty much indisputable within reason.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

9. That's Chernobyl. Poster asked about Japan.

Nobody here is denying a link between radiation and cancer. There is background radiation that causes lung cancer in non-smokers, and other cancers.

The question posed, is the observed rate appreciably higher than what would be expected. I guess it is, but some comparisons would help us understand just how much higher.

From the article:

However, the primary problem is that it is not often scientifically possible to directly connect an individual cancer case to radiation exposure, while increased screening such as in the Fukushima region often leads to earlier-than-normal detection and inflated figures.

Need some good science to tease out the reality.

[phazed0]

12. Just feel like we

already went through all of this for almost 40 years now... I feel I don't need another nuclear disaster to prove what was already proven.

'We', the media, us, in general keep talking about it as if there is some statistical fact that makes it all better. There isn't.

[trotsky]

14. Yes I understand that.

But that's not what I asked.

[Yo_Mama]

13. Here is some suggestive data on incidence/effect of screening program

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4777612/

I'm not sure how understandable this is to those without a background; the analysis suggests that cancer diagnosis rates in the pre-screening (the first three years) were 22 to 30 times higher than expected. Because the initial screening could not have been picking up radiation-associated cancers, the researchers suspect "overdiagnosis".

Here is additional data:
http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f1271/rr

Note that suggestions about forming a control group were rejected for ethical reasons - being in the control group was not considered harmless to the participants because of the high risk over overdiagnosis and injury through unnecessary treatment.

Compared with these results, the fact that as many as approximately 100 thyroid cancer cases aged <=18 years have currently been found suggests over-diagnosis. As of 2013, the age-standardized mortality rate of thyroid cancer in Japan has been decreasing for both males and females. In South Korea, widespread adoption of thyroid cancer screening in adults led to a rapid increase in the incidence of thyroid cancer, but the mortality rate remained unchanged.(6) Surgery for thyroid cancer requires most patients to take lifelong medications and can cause complications in a few cases. A false-positive result leads to unnecessary, sometimes invasive, additional procedures. In fact, in the thyroid examination program in Fukushima, 2237 children (0.8%) proceeded to the additional examination, of which 485 underwent aspiration biopsy. A balance between the potential risks and benefits must be considered for the implementation of the thyroid examination program.