On the one year anniversary of the events leading to the meltdown of Tokyo Electric Power Company’s nuclear generation plant in Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture, the problems posed for the environment and biological life have only intensified. This is because for over the past twelve months the remains of the seemingly distant nuclear reactors continue to emit dangerous radioactive pollutants into the water and air that are cumulative and will remain for many lifetimes. This may come as a surprise to most Americans because there has been a veritable news blackout on the event and its aftermath by Japanese and US news media since June.
The media’s silence is at least as disturbing as the fact that the Environmental Protection Agency, Canadian authorities, and capable university laboratories have likewise ceased testing air, drinking water, dairy products and other consumables in the US for possible nuclear contamination. In the wake of the Fukushima disaster the EPA colluded with nuclear industry lobbyists to obscure and then censor information that may have alerted the American public to potential dangers posed by radioactive fallout. Moreover, the EPA had planned well in advance to dramatically raise the threshold levels of Strontium-90 and Iodine-131 deemed safe for human exposure, which it proceeded to do following the 2011 meltdown in Japan.
While the EPA has betrayed the American people through its conscious negligent failure to monitor the environment after the most momentous nuclear disaster ever, citizen-powered initiatives have sprung up to warn the public of the continued dangers posed by Fukushima. For example, Michael Collins’ EnviroReporter website and Tim Flannigan’s Radiation Network, an international collaborative effort that provides terrestrial radiation readings in real time, have acted as much-needed founts of information for those who remain vigilant and skeptical of the combined corporate media and government’s silence as the smoldering remains of Fukushima continue to threaten the health of all living things.
Horsefeathers. Your comments are curiously circuitous, and unnecessarily so. My argument remains that US and Canadian regulatory authorities and research universities that possess the ability to monitor air, food and water for radiation being emitted from the greatest nuclear disaster in history are abdicating their responsibility in this regard. Why is it that they cannot protect the public health in this simple and obvious way? The EPA answers directly to the Executive so the responsibility ultimately falls on President Obama’s shoulders (as is the case with the disastrous BP crime in the Gulf that the EPA remains in the way of adequately addressing). In fact, following Fukushima the EPA sought to “outsource” its responsibility in this regard to the nuclear industry, and shortly thereafter returned to “business as usual” which means no monitoring, and no protection for the public. See
http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/2012/02/27/epa-and-nrc-turn-to-nuclear-industry-lobbyists-for-radiation-monitoring/
The reason i didnt respond to the BP concern–was because–what else do we expect chlorine to do?
The EPA–similarly– has its story –‘already written’:
“http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/hundreds-of-epa-scientists-0112.html
Mr. McPherson,
I don’t know how you are able to post your comments to my blog without my approval but I do not appreciate it, especially since you have made some bizarre and potentially volatile remarks that are beyond the context of any exchange I’ve sought to prompt in my articles.
I will have no choice but to limit or curtail further remarks if you do not cease and desist.
Sincerely,
James Tracy