"Experts urge great caution over radiation risks"

Japan Times reports that Sugenoya said it is his understanding that the current limits set by the commission (see table) are "relatively stringent" by international standards. However, he added that infants, children up to the age of 14 and pregnant and breastfeeding women should avoid eating food contaminated with even the small doses of radiation.In a short, but hard-hitting, article, the Japan Times Online reports:

"In order to address public concerns over post 3/11 food safety, the government should be more forthcoming in the monitoring and disclosure of data regarding radiation contamination of soil, Akira Sugenoya, mayor of Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture, told this reporter recently.

Sugenoya, a medical doctor, speaks from experience, having spent 5½ years from 1996 in the Republic of Belarus treating children with thyroid cancer. He was there because the incidence of that disease in children surged after the Chernobyl disaster in neighboring Ukraine in 1986...

...he added that infants, children up to the age of 14 and pregnant and breastfeeding women should avoid eating food contaminated with even the small doses of radiation. In fact he said that adults should leave safer food for these more at-risk segments of the population even if it means they will eat contaminated food themselves.

[Sugenoya said] 'What the central government must do now is release all data, no matter how bad, because if it doesn't it can only add to people's suspicions that it is manipulating information...So many people in Japan are now saying that they can't trust their own government.'...".

Richard Broinowski, a former Australian diplomat and now adjunct professor at the University of Sydney, added: "What I am anxious to know is: Are qualified Japanese epidemiologists and public health experts (that is, those not in the pay of the nuclear industry) undertaking objective and impartial research into how deeply and to what intensity, radiation dispersal of cesium-137, strontium-90, iodine-131, noble gases and plutonium-239 ... has spread, and how much the general population of the Tohoku region and other regions of Japan have been exposed?...I also suspect that full disclosure of such data is not in the interests of the Japanese nuclear industry."