Fukushima
Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, 2011.
Backyard, Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, 2011.
Paulo & Joe, Iwaki, 2011.
Earlier this month, I rode with the Safecast crew out of Tokyo and onto Fukushima Prefecture. It was raining and in the back of the van we each had Geiger counters for the radiation measurements we planned to take throughout the day.
Safecast is a volunteer group making and distributing Geiger counters across Japan, collecting readings and sharing that information with the world.
I had been in touch with them since early April as a result of the crowd-sourced radiation map I had created in the wake of the Japanese tsunami and nuclear meltdown. Finally in November I had an opportunity to meet with the Safecast members in Tokyo and travel to Fukushima with them on a radiation expedition.
Safecast Bento bGeigie #2, Japan, 2011.
It was an intense weekend spent with some of the most fascinating people I had ever encountered, people who were dedicated and unapologetic for their knowledge and opinions. It was also the weekend I got to see first-hand how ordinary people, the residents of Fukushima prefecture, move on from such a traumatic set of events and continue to live under the threat of nuclear danger.
We arrived in Koriyama as night fell, a small town on the outskirts of the evacuation zone. Some residents had gathered in the local town hall to discuss radiation. They were very concerned. As we walked in, a woman was cradling her baby born in the summer after the earthquake. I didn’t know what to say.
Our Geiger counters had started registering elevated readings in the air as we neared the town. Now in the hall, we measured elevated readings being emitted by the Japanese paper window shades.
Dan & Pieter, Koriyama, 2011.
It’s difficult to put a definitive measure of danger on radiation levels. We voluntarily expose ourselves to high doses of radiation at many points in our lives, such as taking an x-ray at the doctors or the dentist. The background radiation we experience in our everyday environments is a very small fraction of these high doses, usually less than 1%. The elevated levels of Koriyama were not enough to pose a much greater threat than normal background radiation.
However, there are two concerns:
1) Radioactive particles in the air which could be breathed in and remain in your body to continue irradiating you from the inside. To test for particles in the air, Dan Sythe had brought a blue box that pumped air through a round paper filter to trap any particles for analysis.
2) Radioactive particles that have landed on various outside surfaces such as concrete and wood, in turn bonded with those surfaces and made them radioactive. These particles can’t be removed easily without sanding or removing the surface itself.
Our group made its way to the backyard of a local resident, inside the house, we saw his family and two year-old daughter watching TV. Outside on the deck, in the rain and the dark, we put our Geiger counters down and watched them come alive with a cacophony of clicks. The deck had absorbed so much radioactive particles it was now emitting 26 µSv an hour, about 300 times that of normal background radiation. After an hour of exposure, this meant the equivalent of approximately 26% of a dose of radiation from a chest x-ray.
The drains and concrete pavements around town showed similarly high levels of radiation.
These high levels of radiation may not be a serious concern for visitors, where a visit might be the equivalent of a thorough health checkup at the doctors. But they are a threat to the people of the town, especially the children, who might be walking, living, playing on these surfaces over many years.
In fact we had learned that without proper information or equipment to measure radiation levels, the family had picnicked on the deck the previous month. This is the story of Fukushima for me, that of the need for tools and knowledge so that people could make their own informed decisions.
The town’s people were aware of a danger and had chosen to stay, but the lack of government openness had left them without the ability to protect themselves. This is a failing that is now up to others, like Safecast, to correct.
