- Item: Americans stock up on potassium iodine to protect themselves from radiation released from damaged nuclear reactors thousands of miles away in Japan, disregarding assurances from health officials that the radiation will pose no risk.
- Item: Thousands of Japanese living as much as 100 miles from the damaged reactors abandon their homes and flee to evacuation centers that are experiencing shortages of food, water, and sanitation, disregarding assurances from health officials that the radiation will pose no risk.
- Item: U.S. television networks, that have sent their principal anchors and reporters into active war zones for extended periods, withdraw most of their staff from Japan after just three days, disregarding assurances from health officials that the radiation will pose no risk.
- Item: Scientists monitoring radiation in winds blowing from Japan toward the United States have detected what appears to be a new isotope that could also be a threat to human health. The compound, ferric argon, (FeAr), is apparently a previously undiscovered nuclear fission byproduct that, while not radioactive itself, is always associated with ionizing radiation. The presence of this new isotope is further evidence that there has been at least a partial meltdown at the Fukushima complex.
The FeAr isotope was detected by satellites that normally monitor environmental conditions, adjusted to track the plume of radiation from Japan. The isotope did not trigger radiation detectors but was discovered by a laser spectrometer adjusted for the radiological surveillance. Scientists associated with the monitoring mission say FeAr is invisible, tasteless, and odorless, and can only be detected with specially adjusted equipment. Based on its chemical and molecular composition, they say FeAr is almost certainly dangerous to humans. They say it's composition means that it will act like specific neurotransmitters - chemical messengers in the brain - that trigger the release of corticosteroids and other stress hormones. If higher-than-normal levels of these hormones persist for more than a few weeks, they can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, suppress the immune system, decrease fertility, memory, and growth, and increase likelihood of Type 2 diabetes and clinical depression.
"There is no question that this substance is worrisome," said Dr. Ayyam Affrayed of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control's National Center for Environmental Health. "The presence of this poorly understood substance puts the potential threat of the impending plume in a troubling new light," he added. Dr. Affrayed said that several federal agencies have formed an emergency committee to study the satellite findings, and that the White House and Department of Homeland Security have been notified. The White House and DHS both refused to comment on the existence of such a committee, or about the scientific findings. "The scientific evidence is clear that there is nothing physically dangerous about the winds blowing in from Japan," a spokesperson said.
An expert in the health effects of radiation participating in the satellite monitoring, who did not want to be named, said that, in addition to stimulating the release of stress hormones, FeAr might pose other threats to human health. "It appears quite similar in both chemical composition and physical structure to neurotransmitters that are crucial in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, the area responsible for higher order reasoning and decision making," the researcher said. "FeAr could impair cognition, reasoning, decision making, those sorts of mental functions. We should take very seriously what this substance could do to the choices we make, and what effect that could could have on our health." He said he had contacted the National Institutes of Health urging immediate study of the effects of FeAr on human reasoning and decision-making.
The discovery of this new and potentially dangerous substance associated with radiation comes even as most of the world's science and health experts have cautioned that the radiation from the damaged Japanese reactors does not pose a serious health risk to the general public. They cite studies of 94,000 survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who were within 3 kilometers of ground zero who have been followed for more than 60 years. Epidemiologists estimate, compared to normal cancer rates, the high radiation doses those survivors received caused roughly 500 excess cancer deaths, about two thirds of one percent of the study population. Those studies also found that radiation causes birth defects in children born to women pregnant while they were exposed, but that nuclear radiation does not appear to cause long term genetic damage.
"Radiation is not the risk most people assume it is," said radiation oncologist Dr. Beatrice "Bea" Kahlm. "But this new risk, from FeAR, with the damage it might do from stress, and the way it might impair our decision making and lead to choices and behaviors that might get us into trouble, that's something we really ought to start worrying about."
