From: Chris Busby, The Ecologist
A new study finds that radioactive Iodine from Fukushima has caused a
significant increase in hypothyroidism among babies in California,
5,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean.
The Fukushima catastrophe has been dismissed as a potential cause of
health effects even in Japan, let alone as far away as California.
A new study of the effects of tiny quantities of radioactive fallout
from Fukushima on the health of babies born in California shows a
significant excess of hypothyroidism caused by the radioactive
contamination travelling 5,000 miles across the Pacific. The article
will be published next week in the peer-reviewed journal Open Journal
of Pediatrics.
Congenital hypothyroidism is a rare but serious condition normally
affecting about one child in 2,000, and one that demands clinical
intervention – the growth of children suffering from the condition is
affected if they are left untreated. All babies born in California are
monitored at birth for Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH) levels in
blood, since high levels indicate hypothyroidism.
Joe Mangano and Janette Sherman of the Radiation and Public Health
Project in New York, and Christopher Busby, guest researcher at Jacobs
University, Bremen, examined congenital hypothyroidism (CH) rates in
newborns using data obtained from the State of California over the
period of the Fukushima explosions.
Their results are published in their paper Changes in confirmed plus
borderline cases of congenital hypothyroidism in California as a
function of environmental fallout from the Fukushima nuclear meltdown.
The researchers compared data for babies exposed to radioactive
Iodine-131 and born between March 17th and Dec 31st 2011 with
unexposed babies born in 2011 before the exposures plus those born in
2012.
Confirmed cases of hypothyroidism, defined as those with TSH level
greater than 29 units increased by 21% in the group of babies that
were exposed to excess radioactive Iodine in the womb. The same group
of children had a 27% increase in ‘borderline cases’.
Contrary to many reports, the explosion of the reactors and spent fuel
pools at Fukushima produced levels of radioactive contamination which
were comparable with the Chernobyl releases in 1986. – via ENN
