Study finds rise in lifetime cancer risk among Fukushima 1-year-old girls

[bananas]

Source: Kyodo

The lifetime risk of developing cancer has risen slightly among 1-year-old girls in an area affected by the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, according to a study published online in a U.S. science journal Monday.

The assessment was based on a two-month study by Japanese researchers conducted about a year and a half after the March 2011 nuclear disaster. The study checked the radiation exposure of around 460 residents living near the crippled plant Fukushima Prefecture.

Health risk assessment indicates that post-2012 doses will increase the lifetime solid cancer incidence rate among 1-year-old girls by 1.06 percentage points in the Tamano area of Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, from the average rate of 31.76 percent, the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said.

The study, conducted in August and September of 2012, covered both male and female residents aged 3 to 96 in the village of Kawauchi, the Haramachi district of Minamisoma and the Tamano area — all located 20 to 50 km from the crisis-hit plant in Fukushima Prefecture.

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Read more: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/02/25/national/study-finds-rise-in-lifetime-cancer-risk-among-fukushima-1-year-old-girls/

[bananas]

1. The study does have some limitations...

http://www.ibtimes.com/new-fukushima-radiation-study-looks-ahead-future-cancer-risks-1557613

New Fukushima Radiation Study Looks Ahead To Future Cancer Risks
By Roxanne Palmer on February 24 2014 5:02 PM

A new study of Japanese communities near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant shows a lingering risk of radiation exposure remained more than a year after the March 2011 meltdown.

For the study, a group of Japanese scientists led by a team from Kyoto University recruited 483 people living within 20 to 50 kilometers (12 to 31 miles) of the Fukushima Daiichi plant. For two months in 2012, participants wore personal devices called dosimeters that measured their radiation exposure from the ground, air, and food.

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The study does have some limitations.

“This assessment was derived from short-term observation with uncertainties,” the researchers noted.

The study also did not measure exposure to radioactive iodine, or factor in the effect of radiation doses within the first year of the accident. Though radioactive iodine is a serious health hazard, it has a half-life of just eight days, making it much harder to detect a year after the accident (radiocesium, by contrast, has a half-life of about 30 years).

The study population is also relatively small, as Greenpeace nuclear expert Rianne Teule noted.

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[bananas]

2. only looked at cesium, didn't evaluate dose received during 2011

http://www.livescience.com/43624-cancer-risk-in-fukushima-area-estimated.html

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The researchers cautioned that their study looked at only one radioactive element — cesium — and did not evaluate the radiation dose people may have received during 2011, the year in which the accident occurred.

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[FBaggins]

3. That's consistent with the previous studies

And it's what some of us have been saying all along. The expected impact will be too small to parse out from normal statistical variation, but the most at-risk (the youngest at the time of the incident who stayed in exposed areas) could expect a very small increase in lifetime risk.

Clarification - This assumes that the LNT model is correct (there's reason to believe that it's dramatically conservative at these levels).