Japanese government recognizes first death by radiation from Fukushima

For the first time since a devastating earthquake and tsunami that caused collapses in the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan in 2011, the Japanese government said that a former factory worker died from suites of radiation exposure.

The country's health and labor ministry said the human family should be compensated, according to the NHK national television channel.

It is not clear precisely when the man is dead. He was in his fifties, said NHK, and his duties included "measuring radiation levels at the plant immediately after a serious nuclear accident." He left his job in 2015 and was diagnosed with lung cancer before he died.

The ministry said it "had developed cancer due to a total radiation exposure of about 195 millisieverts," the NHK reported. According to Reuters, exposure to 100 millisieverts of radiation per year "is the lowest level at which any increase in cancer risk is clearly evident."

The earthquake and tsunami killed about 19,000 people, NPR's Elise Hu reported, and "most drowned in minutes". The plumes of radiation caused by the collapses of Fukushima have extended up to 25 miles, she added.

And although this is the first radiation death, NHK says four cancer workers have been found eligible for compensation.

One of them, suffering from leukemia, was compensated last December, according to Asahi Shimbun.

He "was engaged in emergency operations to send water to cool the reactor's containment tanks and assess the extent of the damage," the paper said for several months after the start. of the disaster.

Since workers report cancers that may be related to radiation exposure, it is difficult to prove that fusion is the cause. At least five claims have been refused, according to the Asahi Shimbun.

As Nature reported in 2012, two assessments from the United Nations Scientific Committee for the Study of the Effects of Atomic Radiation and the World Health Organization concluded that "few people will develop cancer because of their exposure to radioactive material … for sure what caused their disease. "

The US report "shows that 167 factory workers received radiation doses that slightly increase their risk of developing cancer," the paper writes. At the same time, for these workers, "future cancers may never be directly related to the accident, because of the small number of people involved and the high cancer rates in developed countries such as Japan".

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