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Letter: Fukushima's real impact was in the evacuation

Published 24 March 2021

From Geoff Russell, Adelaide, South Australia

Regarding your look at the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident 10 years on, I wasn’t surprised by the small impact of radiation on life expectancy (13 March, p 18).

A 2011 study of survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki found that those who got an amount of radiation of less than 1 gray, a massive dose and many times that received by anyone living in the Fukushima area, . So why did those at Fukushima see life expectancy cut by three months?

The atom bomb survivors have been followed for decades and results from this . Those guidelines were ignored when Japan ordered a mass evacuation, including of sick and older people. , many people died because of those evacuations.

Issue no. 3327 published 27 March 2021

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