OPINION: Concern for quake suffers should not be diminished by nuclear fear

          By William Schull

     HOUSTON, Texas, May 20 Kyodo - Circumstances have thrust upon you a challenge that will test your faith in yourselves and your nation. But you will prevail. This belief stems from the many years I have resided in your country and the lessons you have taught me about courage.

     Even in the dark economic days following the cessation of World War II, you demonstrated your resilience and capacity to work collectively for a common purpose. You renounced war; you rebuilt your nation, and in that process you inaugurated changes that shook your traditional way of life to its core, e.g. land reform and suffrage for women. Through these actions you won the respect of all thoughtful persons.

     These are not the achievements of a passive society. They required involvement, planning, and above all steadfastness. You can cope with any problem if you have the desire and the will.

     Unquestionably March 11 was a day that will remain forever in the memory of millions of individuals who watched in awe as a monstrous tsunami struck northeastern Japan. They know of the loss of life, the extent of serious injury, and the extensiveness of the property damage. They have also seen the courage and discipline with which you and your fellow citizens have mobilized to ease the suffering and damage the earthquake that preceded the wave caused.

     But more was to be asked of you. Word came that the reactors at the Fukushima Nuclear power facility had been damaged and there was a threat of a ''significant'' meltdown. This last addition to the equation of harm has attracted a disproportionate amount of attention promoted by a sensation loving media and hidden geopolitical agendas.

     In my view and that of others as well (see, for example, Richard Wakeford's BBC News article of March 18 entitled ''Fukushima -- disaster or distraction?'' and Wade Allison's BBC News article of March 26 entitled ''Viewpoint: We should stop running away from radiation''), Fukushima is no Armageddon or even a Chernobyl. Wakeford and Allison contrast the releases from the Fukushima reactors with those at Chernobyl, and find the former to be less than 1 percent of the latter. They further note that the long-term health effects, if any, will be smaller than our current capacity to measure. In short, there is no rational basis for the global fear that has arisen.

     However, you need not accept my opinion, or those of Allison and Wakeford, or anyone else. You can do your own assessment, and the capacity to do this is readily at hand. The only prerequisite is a computer with access to the internet. Given the level of computer literacy in Japan, this is not a restrictive requirement.

     Truth has always been truth, but never has it been more available to anyone who seeks it than it is now. In the past, the average person had little opportunity to determine whether the advice he or she was receiving was or was not correct, but that is not so now. Indeed, so great is the information available that inevitably some of it must be wrong or irrelevant.

     Search engines continue to improve their specificity and Wikipedia provides a handy basis to avoid errors of fact or interpretation, but nevertheless you should be skeptical of what you read. Examine carefully the credentials of anyone who seeks to influence your judgment (I include myself in this admonition). Beware of overly facile remarks and misleading numbers.

     Look carefully at the units in which a dose is given. For example, 100 microsieverts equals 0.1 millisievert, but since 100 is larger than 0.1 it is tempting to think the former is more prejudicial to health but in fact there is no difference in the energy deposited in tissue. Watch too for expressions such as ''high'' or ''massive'' when no standard of comparison is offered.

     Learn to distinguish between those events (deaths or tumors) that are countable now and those that are conjectured to occur at some undisclosed time in the future. Maintain a logical sense of priority. Do not let a possible hazard, a reactor meltdown, for example, distract you from the suffering of tens of thousands of people.

     Bear in mind that from the moment of your conception, you live in a world awash in ionizing radiation, some naturally occurring; some humankind created. Some is avoidable; some is not. Some is beneficial, some is not. We must all learn to balance these benefits and risks if we are to end the irrational fear of radiation that exists.

     As indicated in the remarks above, a responsible concern to balance the benefits that can accrue from exposure to ionizing radiation with the hazards it presents has long existed. But where that balance should be struck, how it is to be determined, and by whom is not straightforward.

     Over time, national as well as international agencies have claimed a role in this process, and have often been given legislative authority to do so. The pathways to this end have been different in different countries. In the United States, for example, the doses construed as tolerable are those recommended by the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRPM) although cognizance is also taken of the recommendations of the International Commission on Radiation Protection (ICRP).

     Almost from its outset, the debate over how to inform radiation workers and the public has been contentious. Words like ''acceptable'' or ''permissible'' have connotations that are not comfortable to everyone. More acceptable expressions, such as ''alara'' -- that is, ''as low as reasonably achievable'' -- are seen as ''begging the issue'' since they provide no rigid number to guide administrators in their decision making. Be this as it may, the current recommendations regarding annual permissible doses in the United States for radiation workers and the public are 50 mSv and 1 mSv, respectively.

     It is important to bear in mind that these numbers, although offered as guidelines to decision making, have often been interpreted as rules. Maximum Permissible Doses (MPD) are only educated guesses. They are not observation-based; they are model-driven. And given that today, there is only a guarded consensus on the most appropriate model, one should be extremely careful in the advocacy of a position that has the potential to destroy the economy of a nation or compromise the level of support available to those involved in a natural disaster such as the one confronting Japan at this moment.

     Should a reactor problem be a matter of concern? Yes! Is the current one a prelude to disaster? No! Should we allow ourselves to be shackled by fear? No! It would be unconscionable to allow fear to distract us from concern for the tens of thousands made homeless and ill-fed by the quake and the tsunami. Surely the needs of your fellow countrymen and women who are now homeless and ill-fed should take precedence over a few presumptive cases of cancer that may never occur, or if they do are years away.

     I have lived in Japan for varying lengths of time for over half a century and have come to admire greatly your culture and your discipline, resiliency, and dedication. All of these admirable characteristics will be needed in the months and years ahead as recovery of the north occurs.

     Draw upon the reservoirs of strength you have repeatedly demonstrated when you rebuilt a war-devastated nation through hard work, when you have recovered from the damage caused by numerous typhoons as well as the Hanshin earthquake in 1995. Take cheer. You will prevail again, and I am certain of that if you maintain your sense of direction. Ganbatte!

     (William Schull, emeritus professor at the University of Texas, was involved in follow-up surveys on atomic bomb survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after visiting Japan in 1949 for the first time. He also served as vice chairman of the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, a cooperative Japan-U.S. research organization.)

==Kyodo