UNSCEAR（
UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR)
July 20, 2022 “Ajisai no Kai” thyroid cancer support group Motomi Ushiyama, Representative Chikako Chiba, Secretary General
On the occasion of UNSCEAR’s Public Meeting, we write with the wish for UNSCEAR to face the realities of Fukushima’s pediatric thyroid cancer and patients.
We respectfully acknowledge your efforts in preparing the UNSCEAR report on the impacts of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Accident.
Since 2016, we have been supporting pediatric thyroid cancer patients and their families, listening to their grief, agony, anxieties, hardships, difficulties utilizing the prefectural system, and submitting requests for action to the prefecture.
We have read the 2020/2021UNSCEAR report.
The average thyroid equivalent dose of infants in Fukushima Prefecture in the first year of the accident were significantly lower than those reported in 2013, because 1) Japan’s buildings are concrete and block radiation, 2) Japanese people consume a lot of seaweed such as kombu and thus take in little radioactive iodine in their thyroids, and 3) Japan limited shipping at an early stage. Further, there have been and will not be any impacts on genes, in other words, on future generations. We were taken aback by the reasoning so removed from Fukushima and its our realities.
In reality, at the 44th Meeting of the Fukushima Prefectural Oversight Committee of the Fukushima Health Management Survey (FHMS) on May 13th this year, it was reported that 274 people were diagnosed “malignant or suspected malignant” by the thyroid ultrasound examination (TUE).
227 of these patients received operation, and of them, 226 patients received diagnostic confirmation of thyroid cancer. It has also been shown that there are about 30 additional patients of pediatric thyroid cancer that have not been identified or presented on by the prefecture.
The March 2016 interim report on the FHMS also report “frequent occurrences” of pediatric thyroid cancer in Fukushima after the nuclear accident.
Amongst the patients we support are people who were diagnosed with cancer in elementary, middle, or high school, and who gave up on their studies due to treatment, or whose employment was impacted. There are people whose cancer reemerged two to three years after the surgery, who have had further surgeries and received, multiple times, the physically and mentally exhausting radioactive iodine therapy, and those whose lives are threated due to metastasis in the lungs. There are families, anxious of reemergence or metastasis, unable to freely consult with those around them, and forced to lead isolated lives.
Many children are suffering from thyroid cancer. This is a fact. Citizens in Fukushima, in Japan, that suspect that exposure to radiation has impacted the frequent occurrence of thyroid cancer after the accident, are not few.
On January 27th this year, six youth of the patients whose thyroid cancers were found through the thyroid tests (TUE) of the FHMS have filed a lawsuit against TEPCO. Four of the six patients are forced to undergo re-operation due to reemergence of cancer.
There were objections to the report that there was “no association” with radiation exposure due to the nuclear power plant accident from within the Oversight Committee of the Fukushima Prefectural Health Management Survey and the Thyroid Examination Evaluation Committee. Furthermore, the June 2019 summary of the Thyroid Examination Evaluation Committee states that further examination and analysis of multiple factors, including radiation dose, regional classification, and examination intervals, is necessary.
The scientific fact is that at present, it cannot be determined that all pediatric thyroid cancers in Fukushima are unrelated to radiation exposure due to the nuclear power plant accident.
Further, accurate surveys are necessary in order to provide objective information based on scientific findings. However, the prefectural health survey does not accurately capture the actual number and status of pediatric thyroid cancer patients in the prefecture. In addition, the failure to accurately measure radiation doses on a large scale immediately after the accident has resulted in the current situation where no satisfactory scientific explanation can be obtained. However, the recent UNSCEAR report suppresses patient anxiety, instills distrust in science, and leads thyroid cancer patients and their families to isolation. We were pushed to make this proposal by people who did not develop cancer but who carry anxieties due to their exposure to radiation, and people who feel despair and resentment as if their very existence and suffering had been abandoned.
It is an indisputable fact that the Fukushima nuclear accident has contaminated not only Fukushima Prefecture but also a large area of eastern Japan, that mountains and forests remain contaminated, that difficult-to-return zones remain, that tens of thousands of people are still forced to live as evacuees, and that a nuclear emergency declaration remains in effect.
Is Japan and Fukushima Prefecture today not refusing to acknowledge this fact, suppressing people from expressing their anxieties about radiation exposure, and framing those speaking the truth to be criticized as spreading rumors? And they point to the UNSCEAR report as their foundation.
We ask you in earnest, to reconsider the 2020 and 2021 reports with consideration of the possibility that the UNSCEAR report would further increase the anxiety, isolation, and despair of thyroid cancer patients and their families, and that it would further strengthen discrimination and prejudice against them.
2022
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