The multiple nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima plants beginning onI've no idea whether or how to argue with this; for instance, do death rates normally fluctuate by that degree? Is it plausible that the amount of radiation seen in the U.S. following the accident could cause these excess deaths? The excess deaths were allegedly mainly due to influenza and pneumonia in infants, and one wonders whether airborne radiation could cause this.
March 11, 2011, are releasing large amounts of airborne radioactivity that has
spread throughout Japan and to other nations; thus, studies of contamination
and health hazards are merited. In the United States, Fukushima fallout
arrived just six days after the earthquake, tsunami, and meltdowns. Some
samples of radioactivity in precipitation, air, water, and milk, taken by the
U.S. government, showed levels hundreds of times above normal; however,
the small number of samples prohibits any credible analysis of temporal
trends and spatial comparisons. U.S. health officials report weekly deaths by
age in 122 cities, about 25 to 35 percent of the national total. Deaths rose
4.46 percent from 2010 to 2011 in the 14 weeks after the arrival of Japanese
fallout, compared with a 2.34 percent increase in the prior 14 weeks. The
number of infant deaths after Fukushima rose 1.80 percent, compared
with a previous 8.37 percent decrease. Projecting these figures for the entire
United States yields 13,983 total deaths and 822 infant deaths in excess of
the expected. These preliminary data need to be followed up, especially in the
light of similar preliminary U.S. mortality findings for the four months after
Chernobyl fallout arrived in 1986, which approximated final figures.
The authors appear to be activists of some sort, which doesn't make them wrong of course; here is the press release about their study put out by their organization.
Also, that radiation is associated with hormesis could mean potential healthful effects of the radiation, which might have happened in Chernobyl. But again, that would depend on the dose of radiation.
That's fairly stupid. Radiation doesn't kill anything like that fast except in huge doses which certainly couldn't be gotten from cross-Pacific fallout.
ReplyDeleteAny deaths in the US from Fukushima will be lost in the background noise, almost certainly.
Unless there's a convincing explanation for why infant deaths fell 8.37 percent in the previous 14 week period, I would take it that 8.37 percent is a perfectly normal statistical fluctuation for that sample size (whatever it was). Which makes the subsequent 1.80 percent increase seem like a fluctuation of a fluctuation.
ReplyDeleteDollars to doughnuts it's a rolling, .50 caliber lie. It reeks of the lie.
ReplyDeleteIt is something of an epidemiological troll, put out to catch the careless, the unwary, and the true believers.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet, the loosely twisted reasoning that underlies this "study" is no worse than most of the supports for President Obama's "green jobs program," or the IPCCs great climate crusade.
In other words, what you have is political activism disguised as epidemiology.
It is easy to lie with statistics and epidemiology. You don't even need a graduate degree, although it helps for convincing the suckers.
Here is a quick treatment of the Mangano et Sherman article: http://nuclearpoweryesplease.org/blog/2011/06/17/shame-on-you-janette-sherman-and-joseph-mangano/
ReplyDeleteHere is a longer treatment of the same article:
http://nuclearpoweryesplease.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=258
The above links expand the data picture upon which Mangano and Sherman base their article. A more expanded look at the data puts Mangano and Sherman in a very bad light.
Apparently Mangano (MPH and MBA) has a long record of anti-nuclear activism, and of playing fast and loose with data. Sherman has a longer and more interesting history than Mangano. She labels herself "Physician - Author - Activist".
This type of "study" reflects badly on the authors, on the publisher, and on anyone who is taken in by this slippery-handed approach to handling the data.
It's a bit like traveling by plane. Some people will (and do) die from cancer as a result of the increased exposure to radiation which comes from flying at 30,000+ feet.
ReplyDeleteRoughly 2.5 million Americans die every year from all causes.
Deaths rose 4.46 percent from 2010 to 2011 in the 14 weeks after the arrival of Japanese fallout, compared with a 2.34 percent increase in the prior 14 weeks. The number of infant deaths after Fukushima rose 1.80 percent, compared with a previous 8.37 percent decrease. Projecting these figures for the entire United States yields 13,983 total deaths and 822 infant deaths in excess of the expected.
Looks like "Lancet" style mythology to me. Projection piled on top of supposition. Some people will die in America as a result of Fukushima, but this is a shoddy way of estimating how many. Exposure to the recorded levels of Iodine-131 and cesium-137 can result in cancer - but several years or even decades down the road. Not in a matter of weeks though.
From wikipedia;
On 27 March 2011, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health reported that 131I was detected in very low concentrations in rainwater from samples collected in Massachusetts, USA, and that this likely originated from the Fukushima power plant. Farmers near the plant dumped raw milk, while testing in the United States found 0.8 pico-curies per liter of iodine-131 in a milk sample, but the radiation levels were 5,000 times lower than the FDA's "defined intervention level."
Maybe all that radiation will cause Whiskey to mutate into an alpha male.
ReplyDeleteVery hard to believe this number unless it is fabricated by powerful medias. Any accidental death is undesirable though.
ReplyDeleteI recently discovered the following dispersion model, which someone had linked to Berkeley’s discussion page. It uses TEPCO emission data to model possible dispersion patterns for Neptunium and Plutonium
http://www.datapoke.org/blog/89/study-modeling-fukushima-npp-p-239-and-np-239-atmospheric-dispersion/
http://datapoke.org/partmom/a=114
If this model is accurate, it is very disturbing. Where are all of the so-called experts who claimed these elements were too heavy to travel far from the plant site?
Heh, a movie about two black soldiers and one female soldier returning home.
ReplyDeleteYou know what the truth is when they resort to that shit.
In other news...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nhtsa.gov/PR/NHTSA-05-11
I don't think this is Lancet-style epidemiology. The Lancet authors did not have an actual body count and inferred it from anecdotal stories.
ReplyDeleteTotal deaths do vary throughout the year in a fairly regular manner (mostly cold related), and it is possible to make statistical inferences that have some degree of reliability, but not certainty.
After Chernobyl, someone in the EPA estimated that there might have been 60,000 excess deaths in the US in the year following the accident. I've never seen a follow up study that validated or discredited this, but maybe I was inattentive. Anyway, excess deaths from Fukushima is not impossible. The number, however, is very uncertain.
Your complicated explanations make me suspect that you, Al and the American Government are hiding something. Do you dispute that radiation travels at the velocity of light and will kill instantly 10000 miles away?
ReplyDelete(Pls dont send the drones after me, I am just kidding).
Quick answer to the title question: Absolutely not. It's just a load of incompetent bullshit.
ReplyDeleteOn a more interesting note, it turns out that there is zero of [good] evidence of detrimental effects of low dose radiation. And there is absolutely no correlation between levels of natural background radiation and life expectancy. Aren't you a big proponent of of the hormesis idea? Based on it, you should expect some radiation to be health-promoting. Practically all hot springs health resorts are high radiation areas.
I imagine that breathing new car smell is a lot more harmful than a bit of radiation here and there. :-)
What kind of idiosyncratic person are you, Nanonymous? There is no nicer smell than the smell of a new car. Ford Fusion - heavenly! addictive!
ReplyDeleteGood ol' boys... good old boys...
ReplyDeleteI understand the need to reflexively defend anything associated with money making.
Got the MBA myself. a good one. Used to be a Rotary president even.
But the time came when I realized THEY LIE TO US.
Fukushima was a lie. A buddy of mine from my undergrad days is now a hotshot nuke engineer with a big Pennsy energy conglomerate. The day after Fuku he had this longwinded diatribe explaining why we were idiots to worry about it. Nothing could happen, he explained, it's just too safe and "we thought of everything anyway."
Was it Pat Dollard? If not, someone like him ran something very similar. Told them both they were putting their butts out there based on naive (or wishful) government lies. They scoffed, and laughed and insulted me.
Well, they aren't laughing now. The nuke expert disappeared his FB post after three days.
In little dribs and digestible drabs, Our Royal Masters have revised history, Orwell-like, each revision getting closer and closer to what academic and European industrial observers knew from the first: Fuku is a catastrophic disaster that never ends. At least an a-bomb blows up and it's over.
Plutonium. PLU-friggin-TONIUM has been found in Boston with rumours of it in Philly. PLUTONIUM. Don't give me the nonsense about the beneficial aspects of radiation (which works only with natural sources we're equipped by our Maker to handle).
One molecule of Plutonium is lethal. If as much "corium" as it appears was launched into the atmosphere by one or several high velocity explosions of whatever origin ... well that's a problem.
I turned off El Rushbo when he ventured into opera buffa over the housing/mortgage collapse. I was a contractor at Fannie then and knew he was deliberately spinning a tale of false hope and diversion to buy time for his paymasters at the RNC. (Rush cred: I was the "Zookeeper Dave" caller of 1991, and he played my voice-mail rendition of "Hey, Hey, Good-bye" for weeks after the Gingrich revolution. IOW, I am for real, do not dismiss me the same way I dismissed "them" myself when I was young and dumb.)
Well, it was a good thing. It didn't take to long to realize all of them -- every idiotic talking head/flak/blowdried blowhard out there lies to us ... because they can. And they LIKE TO LIE.
If you simply invert everything a talking head tells you, you'll be more right than wrong. Well, invert the "nothing to see here, move along" BS from Tepco and you can see this is disastrous beyond comprehension.
Oh and I've lived through this before. I live downwind of TMI, was associated with the newly minted FEMA, and still remember their decision to cancel evacuation plans since it would have been "impossible". It was much easier -- and convenient -- to lie to us. "No melt down! All is well! Consume and procreate!".
Except now we know of course there was a meltdown at TMI.
"No! Say it ain't so!", sez I.