Millions of Tokyoites are worried about radiation in tap water or in the air, but the thousands of people living in the shadow of Japan’s stricken nuclear plant have another fear: it may force them to abandon their homes for years, if not forever.
More than 70,000 people have already been evacuated from an area within 20 km of the plant, and another 130,000 are within a zone extending a further 10 km in which residents are recommended to stay indoors. They too could be forced to leave their homes if the evacuation is extended due to worsening radiation levels.
Nobody in government has yet touched on the issue directly, but given growing worries about soil contamination in the largely rural area and bans on shipping and sales of local milk and vegetables, many residents fear the worst.
“Nobody wants to say it out loud, but I think that in their hearts everybody worries that they won’t be able to go home for years at least,” said Yoichi Azuma, principal of Koriyama Commercial High School, not far west of the 30-km zone, whose gymnasium has been turned into an evacuation centre.
“People here have suffered three disasters: the quake, the tsunami and the invisible danger of radiation, which is a man-made disaster. We feel a lot of anger about the last one.”
Though some experts say the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, 240 km north of Tokyo, will likely turn out to be less serious than the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, the radioactive substances being emitted are the same – iodine 131, cesium-134 and cesium-137.
The radioactivity in iodine-131 fully disintegrates in 80 days, but it can find its way rapidly into people through the air and through milk and leafy vegetables, lodging in the thyroid gland, where it can cause DNA damage and raise the risk of cancer, particularly in young children.
Cesium is more troubling as it remains radioactive for over 200 years, threatening people with longer-term exposure through food and from external exposure as it settles on the ground.
“The length of time these areas will remain contaminated depends on the radionuclide composition,” said Jim Smith, Reader in Environmental Physics at the University of Portsmouth in southern England.
“If a significant proportion is radiocesium, food bans and, potentially, evacuation may be long-term.”
In Tokyo, government spokesman Yukio Edano pleaded for calm after Tokyo officials reported that radioactive iodine in the city's tap water measured more than twice the level considered safe for babies. Officials urged residents to avoid panicked stockpiling, sending workers to distribute 240,000 bottles — enough for three small bottles of water for each of the 80,000 babies under age 1 registered with the city.
Still, shelves were bare in many stores across Tokyo.
That didn't stop Reiko Matsumoto, mother of 5-year-old Reina, from rushing to a nearby store to stock up.
“The first thought was that I need to buy bottles of water,” the Tokyo real estate agent said. “I also don't know whether I can let her take a bath.”
Maruetsu supermarket in central Tokyo sought to impose buying limits on specific items to prevent hoarding: only one carton of milk per family, one 5-kilogram bag of rice, one package of toilet paper, one pack of diapers, signs said. Similar notices at some drugs stores told women they could only purchase two feminine hygiene items at a time.
New readings showed Tokyo tap water was back to safe levels Thursday but the relief was tempered by elevated levels of the cancer-linked isotope in two neighbouring prefectures: Chiba and Saitama. A city in a third prefecture, just south of the nuclear plant, also showed high levels of radioactive iodine in tap water, officials said.
