When I read the story, I do what I always do, and shot off a note to Ralph Andersen, NEI's chief health physicist. Here's what he had to say about the study:
Please note that there are species of plants, insects and animals that are particularly sensitive to changes in environmental conditions, including radiation. The pale grass butterfly is among the most sensitive, which is why it was selected for study following the accident at Fukushima Daiichi.Good advice, and just the sort of guidance we ought to be paying attention to when we read headlines in the media. In the meantime, some nuclear bloggers have taken a closer look and have shared some similar thoughts. Please visit Atomic Insights and Nuclear Diner for more. Also, be sure to check in with the conversation on Reddit.
This article provides a rational perspective on what has been found, what it may mean, and what it doesn’t necessarily mean.
Similar findings in some species of biota were detected around Chernobyl in the first few years after the accident there, but impacts on the overall environment and ecology were relatively small and the area today is considered by scientists to be verdant and robust in regard to plant and animal life.
Fukushima Daiichi represents a major accident with significant radiological releases and there are and will be discernible consequences for some years to come. Our emphasis here is on taking actions to prevent such an event in the US and globally.
In regard to understanding the consequences there, we remain open-minded and objective, gaining (and sharing) a fact-based perspective on what it is and what it isn’t.
Comments
It’s up to the researcher to do his homework and investigate all possibilities before popping up a conclusion, and omitting prominent factors like toxic tsunamis flooding towns and habitats — which isn’t even considered in this butterfly study, simply means they’re looking for a fast and easy blame toward nuclear plants via radiation effects. If they weren’t sure they should’ve called a peer review instead going public with an assumption designed to further scare the frightened. I would let the chips fall where they may if a separate institution with no axes to grind confirmed this study.
This is a prime example why the nuclear profession/industry desperately needs to create a media/web FUD-busting 911 agency to immediately pounce and question nearly indelible wildfire assertions like this.
James Greenidge
Queens NY
After viewing videos of that tsunami scouring villages and coastal towns, carrying far inland a soup of garbage, sludge, gasoline, farm and industrial chemicals and pesticides and raw sewage, it would take a whooper for me not to believe that toxic brew at the least mutagenic. That the study breezed the possibility off so blithely alone makes it a suspect nuke hatchet job. They're not going to resettle chemical imbued superfund sites like Love Canal here for a while and they are non-atomic -- and curiously unpublicized, unlike mildly irradiated nuke sites, so it'll be interesting how Japan deals with land once saturated by a toxic wave. Will nuclear prejudice be in tow?
James Greenidge
Queens NY
http://www.nature.com/srep/eap-ebm/index.html#earthenvironment
You can't just fabricate that they are anti-nuke because you don't like the outcome of the study.
Joffan - well thought out response.
Really? That is some fine scientific reasoning.
NEI, let's hear a peep!