The Journal Environmental Science and Technology reports in a new study that the Fukushima radiation plume contacted North America at California “with greatest exposure in central and southern California”, and that Southern California’s seaweed tested over 500% higher for radioactive  iodine-131 than anywhere else in the U.S. and Canada:

Projected paths of the radioactive atmospheric plume emanating from the Fukushima reactors, best described as airborne particles or aerosols for 131I, 137Cs, and 35S, and subsequent atmospheric monitoring showed it coming in contact with the North American continent at California, with greatest exposure in central and southern California. Government monitoring sites in Anaheim (southern California) recorded peak airborne concentrations of 131I at 1.9 pCi m−3

Anaheim is where Disneyland is located.

Jun Hirayama, 20 and his grandmother, Akiyo Hirayama, 70, lost their home in the Japanese city of Sendai when the tsunami swept it away on March 11, 2011. They nearly lost their lives when it overtook the car they were driving to escape the wall of water. Akiyo spent a night on the roof of the half-submerged vehicle while Jun hung onto a tire — drifting in freezing waters all night.  Akiyo’s husband, Shinetsu Hirayama, with some family members in another car, was able to make it out safely.

 Jun Hirayam, a college student, had performed as a part-time music DJ at a nightclub, but he lost everything including his clothes and music equipment to the tsunami.

“Even a year after, I still dream about the tsunami every month.”

As crowded as the city feels at times, the present-day Manhattan population, 1.6 million, is nowhere near what it once was. In 1910, a staggering 2.3 million people crowded the borough, mostly in tenement buildings. It was a time before zoning, when roughly 90,000 windowless rooms were available for rent, and a recent immigrant might share a few hundred square feet with as many as 10 people. At that time, the Lower East Side was one of the most crowded places on the planet, according to demographers. Even as recently as 1950, the Manhattan of “West Side Story” was denser than today, with a population of two million.

Inside Japan’s Nuclear Meltdown

The desperate days after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, told by those who were there.

February 28, 2012

In the days after a tsunami crippled Japan’s Fukushima power plant almost one year ago, a small group of engineers, soldiers and firemen risked their own lives to prevent a complete nuclear meltdown.

Investigative reporter Dan Edge wanted to find out what it was like for the workers who were inside the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant when the crisis began. His new Frontline documentary chronicles what happened to those plant engineers, as well as what happened to the small corps of workers who entered the power plant in the days after the disaster.

Edge talked to reactor inspectors, Fukushima residents and nuclear scientists in the Japanese government to piece together Inside Japan’s Nuclear Meltdown, which premieres at 10 p.m. EST Tuesday on PBS.

He tells Fresh Air’s Dave Davies that after the earthquake and tsunami hit, power went out in Fukushima Dai-ichi, leaving the remaining workers stranded in the dark.

“It must have been horrific for them,” says Edge. “Not only do they have no power for the cooling systems, they have no lights for the instrumentation. They do not know what is happening inside the nuclear reactor. They feared the worst.”

Improvising, the workers went out into the parking lots of the plant and ripped car batteries out of their cars in order to bring some of the instrumentation in the plant back to life.

“They discovered that the pressure in the reactor is out of control,” he says. “It’s much, much, much too high. And this is a nightmare scenario for someone who works in nuclear power plants.”

Fans of The Lorax have raised concerns that the new big-screen version is neglecting the environmental message of the beloved Dr. Seuss book. The movie doesn’t come out until March 2, but the initial trailer and promotional materials ignited a round of complaints on the web.

Now people are having a (rather justified) heart attack about the fact that The Lorax is now being used to cross-promote a new SUV. Earlier this week, Mazda announced that it has partnered with Universal Pictures to promote the new “‘Seuss-ifed’ 2013 Mazda CX-5 crossover SUV.” The cross-promotion includes commercials with a cartoon version of the car driving through a valley of Truffula trees. The ads claim that the car is “Truffula tree friendly” –whatever that’s supposed to mean, given that the car is a standard fuel-injection-engine SUV. Sure, it’s apparently better than other SUVs on the market. But not that good.

Here’s the ad:

February 25, 2012

Part one of a two-part series on the Keystone XL pipeline

Gas prices are spiking once again; the cost of a gallon of regular unleaded is about 12 percent higher than it was a year ago. But winter typically isn’t the time for a rise in gas prices. Demand for gasoline is at a 14-year low and domestic oil production is at an eight-year high.

Some analysts link the increase in gas prices to the tensions in Iran and speculators on Wall Street. Others point to policy decisions limiting drilling in environmentally sensitive areas, as well as President Obama’s decision to deny a permit for a massive oil pipeline called Keystone XL.

The proposed pipeline would travel 1,800 miles from Alberta, Canada, all the way down to the Gulf Coast. The controversy over its impact — environmentally, politically and economically — makes it prime election issue.

TransCanada, the company behind the proposal, already operates a massive pipeline that has been pumping crude oil from Canadian tar sands. [emphasis added]

Almost a year after the Japanese Tohoku earthquake and mega-tsunami, the Pacific Ocean is still dealing with the consequences of the catastrophe.

A mass of debris was washed out to sea as floodwaters receded from the land, and some of that wreckage continues to float around the ocean.

Most of it headed eastwards, according to modelling work by the Hawaii-based International Pacific Research Center.

Its staff have given an update to this week’s biennial Ocean Sciences meeting.

“We can only use our model to make projections,” explained International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) scientific computer programmer Jan Hafner.

“So far, the debris field has spread in length more than 2,000 nautical miles, and is more than 1,000 nautical miles wide,” he told BBC News.

That is approaching 4,000km by 2,000km.

Japanese estimates suggested perhaps 20 million tonnes of debris were generated by the earthquake and the incoming rush of water on 11 March last year.

Most would have stayed on land, and a fair proportion pulled out to sea would have sunk rapidly. But it is possible a million tonnes is still floating on the ocean.

Tuesday, May 4, 1999

Dioxin: Proximity to Tokyo dooms Tokorozawa

By MICK CORLISS

Second in a series Staff writer

TOKOROZAWA, Saitama Pref. — Eiko Kotani’s backyard is known the nation over for its garbage. A resident of Tokorozawa’s Kunugiyama district for nearly two decades, she has spent the last nine years watching the forest behind her home become a haven for waste incinerators.

Today, the area goes by the colorful moniker “industrial waste Ginza.”

It was in November 1991 when rancid smoke first assaulted Kotani and sent her into the forest behind her house to find its source. She was shocked to find a smoldering pile of garbage in an open space concealed by trees a few hundred meters from her home. This was one of the first incinerators in Kunugiyama.

The area, a scraggly belt of forest at the junction of four municipalities — Miyoshi, Sayama, Kawagoe and Tokorozawa — is simply called Kunugiyama by locals and has gained dubious distinction as one of, if not the most, concentrated waste incinerator sites in Japan.

Despite its appearance, Kunugiyama is not a natural forest. This once naked plain was planted by locals at the request of the resident feudal lord over 300 years ago to prevent topsoil erosion. Historically, this wall of trees has supplied a wind block as well as a local source of fuel and fertilizer. The forest helped create and sustain a fertile environment that in turn helps sustain one of the nation’s top tea-producing areas.

“Before 1991, there were only one or two waste incinerators in the area,” said Susumu Yokoyama, a farmer who produces mostly organic produce and uses leaves from the forest as fertilizer.

But that changed at the beginning of this decade. Incinerators began to pop up in and around the woods in the area, then soon became pervasive, he said.

Until recently, nearly 60 of the prefecture’s 277 incinerators operated in the area of the four municipalities. The smokestacks of roughly 16 of these pierce the forest canopy within a 500-meter radius of Kunugiyama.

As the number of incinerators billowing black clouds increased, so did the residents’ unease. This was heightened when results from an independent study released in December 1995 found high dioxin levels in the soil and ash in Kunugiyama and the surrounding area, including Koku Koen — a popular park in central Tokorozawa.

Concern deepened when half of the 30 air samples taken by the municipalities in the area found dioxin concentrations exceeding the national standard of 0.8 picograms per cubic meter. A picogram is one-trillionth of a gram. Six of the sites where the samples were taken were schools.

Further investigation and calculation by citizens using government statistics have found infant mortality rates higher than the prefectural average in municipalities with higher concentrations of incinerators.

But why this concentration of incinerators around Tokorozawa?

Both citizens and government officials agree that more than one factor is involved.

The largest factor at play is probably the area’s proximity to Tokyo.

Less than the ideal neighbor, the metropolis exports its waste to surrounding areas to be processed before it is shuttled to the oceans or the mountains for final disposal. Citizens estimate that more than 80 percent of the garbage sent to Saitama Prefecture for processing originates in Tokyo.

And just one exit from Tokyo on the Kanetsu Expressway, the Tokorozawa interchange sits on an ideal location for waste disposal companies. Kunugiyama has the misfortune to lie a mere 15 minutes by car from this highway exit.

“We think the reason incinerators sprang up around Kunugiyama from around 1992 is because that is the period when Chiba Prefecture began to cut the amount of industrial waste it allows in from other prefectures by introducing a prior consultation system,” said Toshihiko Maeda, the leader of a local citizens’ group.

It also makes economic sense for waste disposal companies, because Saitama Prefecture is on the way to final disposal sites, according to Maeda.

“Tokorozawa and Kunugiyama are only 20 or 30 km from Tokyo, and from here companies can easily take the garbage to Nagano, Gunma, Fukushima and Aomori prefectures or the Hokuriku region. It is very convenient geographically for (waste disposal) companies, and it allows them to make more money since most of them get paid per trip.”

In addition to its “prime” location, the Kunugiyama area straddles four municipalities and does not fall under the jurisdiction of any one administrative entity. This makes it difficult for citizens to air their complaints and concerns toward any one municipality or individual.

To field the citizens’ criticism and concerns, like those of Maeda, the prefectural government set up a unit to handle dioxin policy in April 1998.

“Until 1997, the dioxin issue was addressed mainly from the position of waste and garbage incineration,” said Ikuo Sakurai, a member of the prefecture’s dioxin policy team.

“From 1997, the problem really became more evident, and we realized that we needed to conduct surveys of the soil, air and (dioxin) levels in blood and human ingestion.”

In addition, Saitama Prefecture, one of the prefectures without a prior consultation system to limit the shipping of garbage from other areas, plans to introduce one this fall, he added.

After a February news report warning of high levels of dioxin contamination in local produce that temporarily made spinach produced by farmers such as Yokoyama almost worthless, the prefecture urged incinerator operators to voluntarily shut down on Sundays and holidays.

But this has not visibly reduced the amount of waste being burned, which reached almost 500 tons per day in 1998, according to prefectural statistics obtained by locals.

While the air may clear on Sundays, this has only forced incinerators to change their hours of operation, citizens say, citing an increase in the number of facilities that run at night.

The recent setting and gradual tightening of incinerator dioxin emissions limits are part of government efforts to reduce the amount of dioxin released nationwide by almost 90 percent of 1997 levels by 2002.

In December 1997, the Health and Welfare Ministry revised the Waste Disposal Law, reducing dioxin emission limits for the first time ever. These revisions took effect on Dec. 1, 1998.

Under the revised law, incinerators in operation Dec. 1 are allowed to release up to 80 nanograms of dioxin per cubic meter of emissions until December 2002, at which point, depending on their size, they must meet standards of 10 nanograms or less. A nanogram is a billionth of a gram.

Newer facilities are faced with even stricter standards, of between 0.1 and 5 nanograms, depending on their capacity.

But critics contend that this law is merely an indirect endorsement of the status quo, and that the interim effluent value of 80 nanograms is much too high — 800 times that allowed by Germany or the Netherlands.

“There is not a single facility in Kunugiyama that has been stopped because it is releasing more than 80 nanograms. They have all cleared this level,” Maeda said.

“This (80-nanogram) standard is not at all useful in reducing the number of incinerators here.”

Of the 59 incinerators currently operating in the Tokorozawa vicinity, 24 have either been scrapped or are retooling to meet new government regulations, according to the prefecture. The remaining 35 all clear the interim standard, Sakurai said.

But even if they all meet the standard, it is the sheer number of facilities that is the problem, say locals, who called on the Health Ministry late last month to adopt policies limiting dioxin emissions in any one area.

However, Kotani maintains that the plants that have closed or are retooling are small and that garbage is simply being transferred to other sites for incineration.

And a former worker at a local waste processing plant agrees.

“If we don’t take the garbage, what will happen? It will rot on the streets and people will get angry. Someone has to burn it,” said Fardine Ohara, who worked at a Kunugiyama incinerator up until mid-April.

When it comes to dioxin, few things are certain in Kunugiyama and Tokorozawa. Interest is high and change is on the menu, but not fast enough to satisfy local residents. For now, the garbage trucks continue to roll in from Tokyo with their unpopular cargo.

Thursday, June 27, 2002 

Panel recognizes Suginami sufferers but fails to isolate chemical culprits

The government’s arbitration commission for pollution-related disputes ruled Wednesday that a public waste-processing facility in Tokyo’s Suginami Ward caused a number of illnesses among residents in 1996.

However, the Environmental Dispute Coordination Commission said it was unable to specify which chemicals had contributed to “Suginami Disease,” a series of ailments including eye and skin irritation, chest pain, respiratory problems, headaches and dizziness.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government began operating the household-waste processing facility in April 1996. Residents began reporting symptoms of the disease the same month.

The commission also relayed its decision to related administrative bodies — the Environment Ministry, the metropolitan government, and Suginami Municipal Government — telling them to take appropriate measures.

The metropolitan government said later in the day that it will deal with the matter after closely examining the decision.

According to the commission, it is almost impossible to specify and prove that certain chemicals had caused certain symptoms, even after analyzing hundreds of chemical samples taken from the facility.

The characteristics of many forms of chemical poisoning remain unknown to modern science, the commission said.

Hydrogen sulfide, which was drained by from the facility, was mentioned by the commission as a possible cause of some of the symptoms.

The commission recognized 14 of the 18 residents who filed complaints as suffering from Suginami Disease.

In July 1996, after receiving complaints from local residents, the metropolitan government stopped draining waste water containing chemicals from the facility directly into the sewage network. In September that year, residents reported a drastic improvement in their conditions.

The facility is still in use.

Roughly 2,000 people live in the area, which includes Igusamori Park.