On September 14, 2011, the BBC aired a documentary titled Fukushima Disaster: Is Nuclear Power Safe?. Near the end of the video, the host makes the statement that it is quite likely that the main health impacts of the event (leaving aside the direct effects of the initiating earthquake and tsunami) will be traceable to stress and worry caused by fear of radiation. The word modifier that the host did not use, but I will add is “irrational.” Fearing something that has an extremely low likelihood of occurrence is irrational, especially when there are plenty of more likely and more dangerous things to worry about.
Radiation is not a new phenomenon; its impact on human health is perhaps the most formally studied subject of the past 50 years, though many of the studies have not been widely distributed or popularized. The fact is that the negative health effect of low levels of radiation are either zero, positive or so tiny that they are impossible to detect. That should be reassuring to people, even if they continue to believe the nonsensical notion that there is no such thing as zero risk.
It is the moral responsibility of people who understand that fact to share their knowledge widely in opposition to the official pronouncements of the politicians and the professional antinuclear activists. There is NO REASON AT ALL for maintaining an exclusion zone in places where the maximum annual doses are lower than what people in Ramsar, Iran have been receiving every year they have been alive.
The comment thread that is developing at the YouTube site where I found the BBC documentary is a bit distressing, but the best answer to ignorance is knowledge.
I highly recommend reading Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski’s paper titled The Chernobyl Disaster and How It Has Been Understood. We must learn the public health lessons from Chernobyl and ensure that the terrible history of dislocation is not repeated due to ignorance. The cure to the negative health effects of stress and worry caused by irrational fear is shared knowledge and understanding on which to base rational decision making.