The EPA is preparing to dramatically increase permissible radioactive releases in drinking water, food and soil after “radiological incidents,” according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
What is termed a guidance that EPA is considering - as opposed to a regulation - does not require public airing before it’s decided upon.
EPA officials contacted today in the Atlanta and D.C. offices had no response on the issue as of 6 p.m.
The radiation guides called Protective Action Guides or PAGs are protocols for responding to radiological events ranging from nuclear power-plant accidents to dirty bombs.
Drinking water, for example, would have a huge increase in allowable public exposure to radioactivity, the group says, that would include:
A nearly 1000-fold increase in strontium-90
A 3000 to 100,000-fold hike for iodine-131
An almost 25,000 rise for nickel-63
The new radiation guidance would also allow long-term cleanup standards thousands of times more lax than anything EPA has ever before accepted, permitting doses to the public that EPA itself estimates would cause a cancer in as much as every fourth person exposed, the group says.
These relaxed standards are opposed by public health professionals inside EPA, according to documents PEER said it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
PEER is a national alliance of local state and federal resource professionals
I found this posted late yesterday on Free Republic. Full text:
A text message from my nephew in Japan. He works for a contractor that services news organizations worldwide.
MARK - ARRIVED HERE ONE WEEK AFTER QUAKE. 145 MILES FROM REACTORS. AREA IS INDUSTRIAL WAREHOUSE COMPOUND. WE HAVE TRUCKS FOOD WATER FUEL GENERATORS BATTERIES BEDDING HYGIENE CAMERAS DISH AND RADIOS DROPPED HERE 8 DAYS BEFORE QUAKE. 2 - 6.0+ QUAKES HERE SINCE. BUILDINGS OK. 3 NEWS TEAMS USING OUR STUFF. BUSY. NRC AND DOD HAS WAREHOUSES IN HERE. DOD JUST SET UP SECURITY. NRC GUYS HERE ARE PISSED. THEY WANTED MILES OF TRASH BURNED BEFORE IT COULD BLOW AND FLOAT INTO THE NORTH PACIFIC GYRE. NOW IT IS CONTAMINATED AND BURNING MAY BE BAD. US STATE DEPARTMENT AND JAPANESE GOVERNMENT STOPPED THE BURN. RESUPPLY HERE SLOW. BE HOME MAY 15-20. BACK HERE IF CONTRACTS SIGNED BY JUNE. GITD GARY-
Send to anyone you know in japan! Assuming Youtube isn't 100% banned there. The US military is going to start evacuating the COUNTRY of japan!
This should settle the debate as to WHETHER or not there was a meltdown... confirmed ... MELTDOWN has occurred... otherwise no evacuations would be needed.
Today.. march 17, 2011 .. the biggest evacuation ever attempted begins by the United States and Japan! women and children first... As U.S. President plays golf and spend day talking about basketball “to calm fears”
Go to wwwDOTblackcatsystemsDOTcom/RadMap/map.html radiation map on google and you will find that the levels are shown as **** NORMAL**** for Tokyo and the US right now... Here are the levels last time I checked the map: 20 Tokyo 20 Portland 10 San Francisco 15 Los Angeles 27 Denver 10 Austin 15 New York. Normal background radiation is between 5 and 28!!! Everyone should be taking iodide potassium pills ‘now’, wherever you live in Japan or the U.S. Radiation in the food supply will be the next problem!Potassium Iodide Runs Low as Americans Seek it Out
clayvessel 6 minutes ago Hello randcorp, I have potassium iodide pills I started last Friday, on the back of the box per the nuclear regulatory commission, it states that radioactivity goes airborne and waterborne and will spread up to 200 miles. Now that was last Friday with the first venting which is radioactive steam. Japan moved people 12 miles then 20 miles, radiation got to the coast of Ca. yesterday and spiked to 234, in japan, the readings got to 8,200, please keep commenting and lets us know
WASHINGTON — The United States has authorized the first evacuations of Americans out of Japan, taking a tougher stand on the deepening nuclear crisis and warning U.S. citizens to defer all non-essential travel to any part of the country as unpredictable weather and wind conditions risked spreading radioactive contamination.
The U.S. is doing minute-by-minute analysis of the fast-moving situation, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday.
Passengers and cargo arriving from Japan are being screened for radiation “in an exercise of caution,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Thursday. She said no harmful levels of radiation had been detected.
President Obama planned to make remarks on the crisis later in the day.
On Wednesday, Obama placed a telephone call to Prime Minister Naoto Kan on Wednesday to discuss Japan’s efforts to recover from last week’s devastating earthquake and tsunami, and the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Dai-chi plant. Obama promised Kan that the U.S. would offer constant support for its close friend and ally, and “expressed his extraordinary admiration for the character and resolve of the Japanese people,” the White House said.
But a hastily organized teleconference late Wednesday with officials from the State and Energy Departments underscored the administration’s concerns. The travel warning extends to U.S. citizens already in the country and urges them to consider leaving. The authorized departure offers voluntary evacuation to family members and dependents of U.S. personnel in Tokyo, Yokohama and Nagoya and affects some 600 people.
Senior State Department official Patrick Kennedy said chartered planes will be brought in to help private American citizens wishing to leave. People face less risk in southern Japan, but changing weather and wind conditions could raise radiation levels elsewhere in the coming days, he said.
“This is a very serious problem with widespread ramifications,” Clinton said during a visit to Tunisia. “There will be a continuing evaluation. This is ... a minute-by- minute analysis and we’re doing everything we can to support the Japanese and their heroic efforts in dealing with this unfolding disaster.”
Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said the military will coordinate departures for eligible Defense Department dependents.
The decision to begin evacuations mirrors moves by countries such as Australia and Germany, who also advised their citizens to consider leaving Tokyo and other earthquake-affected areas. Tokyo, which is about 170 miles from the stricken nuclear complex, has reported slightly elevated radiation levels, though Japanese officials have said the increase was too small to threaten the 39 million people in and around the capital.
Anxious to safeguard the U.S. relationship with its closest Asian ally, Obama told Kan Wednesday evening about the steps the U.S. was taking, shortly before the State Department announced the first evacuations.
But the alliance looked likely to be strained, with the U.S. taking more dramatic safety precautions than Japan and issuing dire warnings that contradicted Japan’s more upbeat assessments.
Earlier Wednesday, the Obama administration urged the evacuation of Americans from a 50-mile radius of the stricken nuclear plant, raising questions about U.S. confidence in Tokyo’s risk assessments. Japan’s government was urging people within 20 miles to stay indoors if they could not evacuate.
White House spokesman Jay Carney sought to minimize any rift between the two allies, saying U.S. officials were making their recommendations based on their independent analysis of the data coming out of the region following Friday’s massive earthquake and tsunami.
“I will not from here judge the Japanese evaluation of the data,” Carney told reporters. “This is what we would do if this incident were happening in the United States.”
Until Wednesday, the U.S. had advised its citizens to follow the recommendations of the Japanese government. As late as Tuesday, Carney had said those recommendations were “the same that we would take in the situation.”
But conditions at the nuclear plant continued to deteriorate, with surging radiation forcing Japan to order workers to temporarily withdraw. Obama met at the White House with Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, who recommended the wider evacuation zone.
During testimony on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Jaczko said anyone who gets close to the plant could face potentially lethal doses of radiation.
“We believe radiation levels are extremely high,” he said.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the U.S. had consular personnel in the Miyagi and Ibaraki prefectures and was sending officials out to check on Americans.
“We have consular teams on the ground,” Toner said. “Where they can, they are going door to door. They are going to hospitals. They are trying everything in their power to reach out and find American citizens.”
The Pentagon said U.S. troops working on relief missions can get closer than 50 miles to the plant with approval. Lapan said the U.S. would review requests from the Japanese for assistance that would require troops to move within that radius, though no approval for such movement had been given since the stricter guidelines were enacted.
The Pentagon said troops are receiving anti-radiation pills before missions to areas where radiation exposure is likely.
“U.S. forces remain in Japan and the U.S. has full capability to fulfill our alliance commitments to defend Japan and maintain peace and security in the region,” Lapan said.
With the arrival of three more ships to the massive humanitarian mission, there were 17,000 sailors and Marines afloat on 14 vessels in waters off Japan. Several thousand Army and Air Force service members already stationed at U.S. bases in Japan have also been mobilized for the relief efforts.
Airmen have been flying search and rescue missions and operating Global Hawk drones and U-2 reconnaissance planes to help the Japanese assess damage from the disasters. The operation is fraught with challenges — mainly, figuring out how to continue to provide help amid some low-level releases of radiation from the facility, which officials fear could be facing a meltdown.
Weather also temporarily hampered some relief plans Wednesday. Pilots couldn’t fly helicopters off the deck of aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan until late afternoon because of poor visibility. The 7th Fleet said 15 flights with relief supplies were launched from the eight-ship carrier group, about half as many as the 29 flights reported the previous day to deliver food, water, blankets and other supplies.
Several water pumps and hoses were being sent from U.S. bases around Japan to help at Fukushima, where technicians were dousing the overheating nuclear reactors with seawater in a frantic effort to cool them. The U.S. had already sent two fire trucks to the area to be operated by Japanese firefighters, said Cmdr. Leslie Hull-Ryde, a Pentagon.
