Every person on Earth got the equivalent of an extra x-ray from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, a new study claims.
Researchers have carried out the first global survey of radiation exposure caused by the meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan after a tsunami struck in 2011.
They concluded that people need not panic about the dosage.
‘We don’t need to worry,’ Nikolaos Evangeliou at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, whose team conducted the tests, told the annual meeting of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna, Austria, last month, according to New Scientist.
‘More than 80 per cent of the radiation was deposited in the ocean and poles, so I think the global population got the least exposure.’
The researchers estimated the dose that most individuals received to be 0.1 millisievert.
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However, a typical CT scan delivers 15 millisieverts, for example, while it takes 1000 millisieverts to cause radiation sickness.
Bird numbers have dramatically declined in Fukushima, seperate research has revealed.
Scientists analysed 57 species in the region and found that the majority of populations had diminished as a result of the nuclear accident.
They found that one breed in particular had plummeted from several hundred before the 2011 disaster to just a few dozen today.
The research, published in the Journal of Ornithology, was carried out by scientists at the University of South Carolina including biologist Dr Tim Mousseau.
They showed that the situation has steadily worsened since the disaster on 11 March 2011.
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And while background radiation has declined in the region in recent years, the negative effects of the accident on birds are actually increasing.
‘The relationship between radiation and numbers started off negative the first summer, but the strength of the relationship has actually increased each year,’ Dr Mousseau said.
‘So now we see this really striking drop-off in numbers of birds as well as numbers of species of birds.
‘So both the biodiversity and the abundance are showing dramatic impacts in these areas with higher radiation levels, even as the levels are declining.’
Read more at The Fukushima nuclear disaster gave everyone on the PLANET an X-ray’s worth of radiation
