What are officials hiding about Fukushima?

The disaster at Fukushima nuclear plant has released more radiation and caused greater ongoing health hazards than the Japanese government has acknowledged. Recent studies indicate the impact of Japan’s disaster on Canada. Those impacts are in fact worse than Canadian officials had anticipated, and they are cause for concern.

A Health Canada monitoring station in Calgary detected radioactive material in rainwater that exceeded Canadian guidelines during the month of March, according to Health Canada data obtained by the Georgia Straight.

Canadian government officials didn’t disclose the high radiation readings to the public. Instead, they repeatedly insisted that fallout drifting to Canada was negligible and posed no health concerns.

In fact, the data shows rainwater in Calgary last March had an average of 8.18 becquerels per litre of radioactive iodine, easily exceeding the Canadian guideline of six becquerels per litre for drinking water.

As of late June 2011 a spike in sudden infant deaths occurred in British Columbia. It is yet to be determined whether this spike is related to Fukushima radiation, though researchers studying a similar spike in Washington state, USA are investigating possible connections.