Radioactivity in the environment chapter 12 environmental injustice inherent in radiation dose standards

Radioactivity in the environment chapter 12 environmental injustice inherent in radiation dose standards Radioactivity in the environment chapter 12 environmental injustice inherent in radiation dose standards Radioactivity in the environment chapter 12 environmental injustice inherent in radiation dose standards Radioactivity in the environment chapter 12 environmental injustice inherent in radiation dose standards Radioactivity in the environment chapter 12 environmental injustice inherent in radiation dose standards

Radioactivity in the Environment, Volume 19

ISSN 1569-4860, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-045015-5.00012-5

Environmental Injustice Inherent

in Radiation Dose Standards

Kristin Shrader-Frechette

Department of Philosophy and Department of Biological Sciences, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA

E-mail: kshrader@nd.edu

12.1 INTRODUCTION

Consider the following statements

(A) “The only possible physical/health consequences of the Fukushima

disaster would be the occurrence of cancer.”

(B) “Besides thyroid cancer, no other cancers have been recognized to have

increased after…[the] Chernobyl [nuclear accident].”

(C) “Instruction to evacuate [Fukushima] has…been issued…where you might receive physical effects from radiation…If you do not receive… instruction to evacuate, you can stay.”

Chapter Outline

12.1 Introduction 197

12.2 The Fukushima

12.3 Fukushima

Environmental-Injustice

12.4 Poor People: EIJ Victims 200

12.5 Poor People and Nuclear/

Radiation Regulations 201

12.6 Children: FD EIJ

12.7 Children and Nuclear-Radiation Regulations 204 12.8 Nuclear Workers:

FD EIJ Victims 206 12.9 Workers and

Nuclear-Radiation Regulations 207 12.10 Future Generations, FD, and Nuclear-Radiation Regulations 208 12.11 Conclusions 210

(D) “Below the 20 mSv dose, it is OK to lead a normal life…you do not need

to worry.”

(E) “If you live in an area outside of the evacuation area, you do not need to

worry about giving or receiving any radiation at all” (MEXT, 2011) Statements (A)–(E) above are obviously false, yet the Japanese government posts them on an official government website for Fukushima-Daiichi (FD) information Even if one looks at a scientifically “old” source, a classic US National Academy

of Sciences report, published 6 years before the Japanese postings, it is clear that (A) is false because radiation effects also include genetic damage, transmissible mutations, autoimmune disease, cardiovascular disease, etc (NAS, 2006) (B)

is false because the Chernobyl accident is documented as having caused many cancer and non-cancer effects, including increased autoimmune disease, genetic mutations, chromosomal aberrations, etc (NAS, 2006) (C)–(E) are false because the evacuation occurred only for those receiving>20 mSv doses, yet doses<20 mSv are risky, as there is no safe dose of ionizing radiation; radiation effects are lin-ear, with no threshold (LNT) for increased risk/harm (NAS, 2006; Walker 2000) Because the Japanese government misrepresented the FD accident, both in ways (A)–(E) and by underestimating FD radiation releases (Shrader-Frechette, 2011,

2012), this chapter shows that FD is a classic situation of environmental injus-tice—disproportionate/inequitable pollution affecting the most vulnerable people

12.2 THE FUKUSHIMA ACCIDENT

What happened at FD? There were three nuclear meltdowns, releases of “extremely intense radioactivity” (Kerr, 2011; Tabuchi & Pollack, 2011), four explosions spew-ing highly radioactive debris for miles, roofs/walls bespew-ing blown off several reactors, and gaping holes ripped in nuclear containment Reported nuclear-plant-radiation doses were at least as high as 500 milliSieverts (mSv)/hour (Bradford, Lyman, & Kanter, 2011; Friedman, 2011; PSR, 2011; Suzuki, 2011) For this dose, according

to the classic (International Agency for Research on Cancer) dose–response curve for ionizing radiation, after just 2 h, all fatal cancers—among exposed-workers— could be attributable merely to FD radiation (Cardis et al., 2005, 2007)

FD radiation levels were so high that, for weeks, workers could not enter the reactor building, even for minutes; hence it was impossible to stop the 6 runaway reactors and 6 uncontrolled spent-nuclear-fuel-storage pools Instead, radioactive fuel melted through the thick steel/concrete of several reactor bot-toms Tons of irradiated water also leaked from FD into the Pacific, at doses of

1000 mSv/hour; because of no room to store tons of other contaminated water, Japanese officials deliberately dumped it directly into the Pacific, without warn-ing nearby countries (Kerr, 2011; Tabuchi & Pollack, 2011) Yet a 1000 mSv radiation dose is enough to cause nausea/vomiting; triple this dose is lethal, and people could die after only 3 h of exposure Even 19 miles from the crippled plant, the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency said waterborne-radiation

doses were thousands of times above normal (Belson & Tabuchi, 2011a, 2011b;

for Social Responsibility (PSR), winner of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize, esti-mated that FD radiation releases could be “several times that of the Chernobyl [nuclear-accident] release.” The FD cesium release, alone, was equivalent to that from 168 Hiroshima bombs (Bradford et al., 2011)

Yet, if German physicians and scientists, as well as the World Health Orga-nization are correct, Chernobyl caused as many as 38,000 to 60,000 premature cancer deaths—something that suggests FD could cause even more fatalities The Reactor Safety Team of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) also warned that the runaway FD reactors and fuel-storage pools posed “threats that could persist indefinitely” (Belson & Tabuchi, 2011a, 2011b; Suzuki, 2011)— that there could be additional “catastrophic explosions” (Glanz & Broad, 2011) Former US energy secretary Robert Alvarez said the FD disaster could cause “a catastrophic release of radiation that will not necessarily happen all at once— that could make contaminated areas of land “uninhabitable for decades” ( Brum-fiel, 2011) Consequently, as the Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano warned, it is “unlikely that evacuations will be resolved soon” (Fountain, 2011a);

as the Japanese Nuclear Safety Commission warned, “radiation levels are unlikely

to decline for some time” (Broad & Jolly, 2011; Shrader-Frechette, 2011, 2012)

12.3 FUKUSHIMA ENVIRONMENTAL-INJUSTICE VICTIMS

Who are the main environmental-injustice (EIJ) victims of this devastating nuclear accident? The most obvious ones are uneducated and uninformed people who have been misled about government claims (A)–(E), and therefore are EIJ victims inso-far as they cannot give free, informed consent to risks that have not been adequately disclosed These uneducated and uninformed citizens also are EIJ victims insofar

as they have FD-related anxiety/stress, because in addition to misleading them, the government blames these victims, not itself and its poor nuclear management for FD-related stress Recall that, after the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents, once the US and USSR governments misled citizens about these accidents and their effects, they also blamed the victims for being “radiophobic” and nuclear hypochondriacs (Shrader-Frechette, 2011) Similarly, after FD, the Japanese gov-ernment blamed the victims, not itself It claims on its official FD website that

(F) “People’s psychological stress from having anxiety about being exposed

to [FD] radiation is more serious than the actual effect of radiation.”

(G) “Overreaction [to FD radiation] causes disruption to normal life and

prej-udice in society Everything requires balance.”

(H) “Some people have misunderstandings [about FD] The government will

work hard to help them understand correctly” (MEXT, 2011)

Besides the uneducated and uninformed, other key FD EIJ victims include poor people, children, and nuclear workers Subsequent sections of the

chapter consider them, in order However, Japanese EIJ victims have only recently been recognized Scholars say that, despite the well-known Minimata tragedy, only after 2006 was there any Japanese recognition of both many

“ environmental-pollution diseases in Japan” and the “state of social exclusion”

of EIJ victims—mainly because Japan appears to be a relatively egalitarian society (Mori, 2008)

12.4 POOR PEOPLE: EIJ VICTIMS

Although Japanese social inequalities within the population tend to be less expressed than in other nations (Kagamimori, Gaina, & Nasermoaddeli, 2009), poor people in Japan are EIJ victims insofar as poor people anywhere always bear the brunt of environmental hazards This is probably both because they tend to be less educated and informed than other citizens, and thus cannot pro-tect themselves from pollution as well as others can; also, they often cannot afford to move away from dangerous situations In Japan, EIJ among the poor may be increasing because Japan’s economic inequality has been increasing for decades; Japanese economic inequality “is now higher than the OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] average, and the ratio of people with income below the poverty line…ranks in the highest group among OECD member countries” (Ishisa, 2010; Oshio & Kobayashi, 2009) Indeed, Japanese economic inequality, as measured by income/assets/spending,

is worse than in the US—long considered the most economically unequal soci-ety in the developed world (Ohtake, 2008) Because of this increasing economic inequality, and because social stratification in Japan is quite rigid, the Japanese middle class is also smaller than that in the US and much smaller than that in the western Europe Moreover, Japanese citizens tend to assume that Japanese poor are poor “due to their individual moral failings…a situation that still affects Japanese social-welfare policies” (Tipton, 2008) Consequently, “the [Japanese] government has been reluctant to acknowledge poverty…and has not put any effort into measuring poverty”; as a result, both poverty and EIJ have wors-ened, so that Japanese childhood poverty predicts adult poverty, and so that poor people are subject to “social exclusion” (Abe, 2010; Shrader-Frechette, 2012) Given such circumstances, it is unsurprising that, after the FD accident, poor people—especially the sick and elderly poor who lived near the FD plant— became EIJ victims They could not afford to pay anyone to take them away

In fact, even before the FD tragedy, the 1995 Kobe earthquake clearly illus-trated the plight of elderly poor and sick poor affected by EIJ The earthquake

“disproportionately affected parts of the city where there were more elderly, people with disabilities,” partly because low-income housing is closer to the shore, “built on silt, or in reclaimed areas…[having] weak soil or landfill that liquefied during the quake.” However, high-income housing was “located in the mountains facing the bay,” where “roads were wider” and “access was bet-ter.” Thus, after the 1995 Kobe earthquake, just as after 2005 US Hurricane

Katrina, the national government dallied “for days” while people were dying

in the streets In both cases, the government response was “too little, too late.” Japanese citizens, like those of New Orleans, “were outraged that news media were able to get helicopters in for live coverage of the ongoing tragedy, while the national government was seemingly still in denial” (Nakamura, 2009) After the FD disaster, many Japanese poor were abandoned by government and “marooned” for weeks without roads, electricity, or water; those who were able tried to “forage for firewood…lug water from the marsh,” and later, to wait for relief workers giving them “their one meal a day”—a piece of bread, a can of tuna, and a pack of instant noodles; for weeks, many poor people had no medi-cine and no way to get to the hospital to receive either medimedi-cine or medical care (Fackler, 2011a) Weeks after the accident began, there was still a “fuel shortage

in the disaster zone, hampering relief efforts and leaving [poor] evacuees—even the sick and the elderly—without transportation or heat,” despite the frigid, snowy conditions (Broad & Jolly, 2011) Why were the poor so hurt by FD? One reason is that the poor tend to live near noxious facilities, such as the

FD reactors Within the first month after the accident began, many nearby residents—too poor to go anywhere—already had been subjected to major quantities of radiation Why? Despite outcries from other nations, the Japanese government insisted that it had plans neither “to expand the [12-mile] zone”

of evacuation, nor to begin soil clean-up of cesium Yet, to avoid poisoning the food chain for thousands of years, soil “decontamination has to be done very quickly,” or it cannot be done at all Not until a month after the disaster began did the government begin considering expanding the evacuation zone that the US and international nuclear agencies had long ago recommended (Broad

& Jolly, 2011; Reich, 2011; Shrader-Frechette, 2011, 2012; Kaiser 2011; see

faced EIJ

12.5 POOR PEOPLE AND NUCLEAR/RADIATION

REGULATIONS

Poor people living near FD also face EIJ because of lenient radiation-dose stan-dards and poor nuclear-siting regulations At least in the US, those living near nuclear facilities tend to be poor, and the same is likely true in other nations (Alldred & Shrader-Frechette, 2009; Shrader-Frechette, 2011) For poor people living near nuclear plants, even without any accidents, their radiation risks are higher than those faced by others Why? Nuclear facilities are allowed to release radiation (up to 25 mrem/year/facility) The result? Statistically-significant increases have been documented in infant/fetal mortality near the US reactors (Fountain, 2011a; Normille, 2011), in childhood leukemia near German reac-tors (Mangano, 2008), and in cancer near UK reactors (Spix, 2008) These data suggest that (even without any accidents) those living near reactors—who also tend to be poor—face higher health risks (Mangano, 2002; Shrader-Frechette,

2002) As already mentioned, both the US National Academy of Sciences and scientific consensus are that the only safe dose of radiation is zero, and that the damaging effects of ionizing radiation are cumulative and LNT This means that, all other things being equal, higher ionizing-radiation doses cause greater molecular damage (thus more cancer, genetic defects, immune deficiencies, etc.) This is why, in 1974, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said that normal US radiation releases, between 1970 and 2020, could cause as many

as 24,000 additional US deaths, even without any accidents (Mangano, 2000)

If the preceding data are correct, nuclear regulations contribute to poor peo-ple’s being EIJ victims in several ways First, radiation-dose standards allow predictable, near-reactor increases in radiation-related harms Second, nuclear-siting regulations do not prevent the facilities from having a greater probability

of being built in poor neighborhoods; instead government could make meeting environmental-justice (EJ) criteria necessary for nuclear siting Third, regula-tions do not ensure that poor people near nuclear facilities are able to exercise free informed consent to them In Fukushima, for instance, local residents are EIJ victims because their poverty forced them to accept the risky FD nuclear reactors in the first place It is well known that poor/minority residents are often forced to accept very risky facilities, merely because they are poor They need either jobs or help with the local tax base, if they are to receive even the normal government services for citizens In addition, poor residents in the Fukushima Prefecture live in an economically depressed area that, because of its poverty,

is a target of those wishing to site nuclear facilities Thus, although the Tokyo Electric company, owners of the 6 FD reactors and storage pools, has long been plagued with “cover-up scandals” about safety, Fukushima residents agreed to provide the home for the FD reactors because of the much-needed monies they would bring By the end of the 1970s, the plant employed thousands of workers, and local people “received substantial subsidies from the national government

as well as property tax receipts from Tokyo Electric [the owner of FD] By

2008, the subsidies alone added 13 billion yen ($157 million)” to town finances

In 2007, only when the town accumulated a debt of $121 million, did it approve two new reactors at FD In 2010, the town “received about $45 million from the government, or 60 percent of its total revenue” in subsidies because it had accepted these new reactors Obviously, however, poor people living near FD did not genuinely consent to these reactors if they needed them, to obtain even basic services that citizens elsewhere already enjoyed (Shrader-Frechette, 2011,

2012; Takahashi, 2011)

Of course, the Japanese government is not completely to blame for FD EIJ After FD, it was busy dealing with the tsunami As the Japanese Prime Minister put it, “The first priority is the [nuclear] accident response [preventing worse explosions, core melts, and contamination] Then it [government] needs

to help those who have been affected” (NRC/NAS, 2006) The Japanese poor also were abandoned after FD because, at least in the first several weeks of the disaster, potential rescuers would not come into the heavily irradiated disaster

zone; weeks after the accident had begun, victims faced “starvation…trapped

in their homes or refugee shelters” because “delivery trucks refused” to come within tens of miles of FD (Jolly, 2011a; The Economist, 2011) Radiation fears also contributed to FD EIJ As a result, for weeks the sick and elderly were abandoned; bodies of hundreds of people…lay unburied near the plant because they were contaminated by radiation…The police and morgue workers were unable to handle them safely” (Fackler, 2011b; Schenkman, 2011) Of course, Japanese-government authorities did not do adequate planning for how to deal with the FD disaster As a result, the poor were hurt most

Even if the Japanese government had planned adequately, however, this alone would not have kept Fukushima poor people from being EIJ victims As already noted, they still faced weak radiation-protection standards, siting regu-lations that allow EIJ, and lack of citizen consent to nuclear siting Thus, FD shows that EIJ can occur even before disaster strikes, if legal/ethical strategies for stopping/preventing EIJ are inadequate Under current law, one can sue for redress only retroactively, only after demonstrable harm has occurred Yet as the

FD case shows, after demonstrable EIJ and radiological harm has occurred, it is too late to protect people The plight of Fukushima poor people after FD like-wise suggests that because catastrophes can cripple disaster-related government actions and agencies, avoiding EIJ requires avoiding situations that could lead

to such crippling catastrophes (Shrader-Frechette, 2011, 2012)

12.6 CHILDREN: FD EIJ VICTIMS

Among poor people living near FD, of course children are some of the most troubling EIJ victims Why? Most adults have defenses against premature dis-ease and death caused by pollution, but children often do not (UNICEF, 2005) Because their organ/detoxification systems are still developing, they are less able to withstand most toxins Per unit of body mass, children also take in more air/water/food/pollutants than adults do For these reason, quantitative risk assessors use the rule of thumb that because children are about 10 times more susceptible to pollutants than adults receiving the same dose, children have

“particular need for special protection from pollutants” (APHA, 2000)

Not surprisingly, children have been FD EIJ victims mainly because, despite their heightened sensitivity/vulnerability, radiation-dose regulations provide them no additional protection, beyond what adults receive After the FD disas-ter, children and adults living near the disaster area were allowed to receive

2000 mrem/year, or 20 mSv/year radiation Thus PSR says the FD “impact on the health of Japanese children is being glossed over.” They say there are about 350,000 children < age 18 living in Fukushima Prefecture and that, if they received only two years of allowable RD-radiation exposure, at least 2500 of them would die prematurely of cancer After four years of exposure, 5000 of these children would die prematurely After 8 years of this exposure, 10,000 of the children would die prematurely of cancer—and yet the nuclear industry and

Japanese government are covering up these health consequences Instead, the Japanese government and nuclear industry are claiming the children’s doses are safe, as the beginning quotes from the Japanese-government website illustrate Yet, as already mentioned, no dose of ionizing radiation is safe—especially not

a dose (20 mSv/year) that is about 10 times higher than natural background and about 25 times higher than each nuclear plant is allowed to release in an entire year Thus, PSR says that the allowed Japanese exposure of the children at doses up to 20 mSv/year—mainly to save money and avoid more cleanup—is

“medically unacceptable.” Already by June 30, 2011, newspapers around the world confirmed that Fukushima children tested positive for internal radiation exposure—through food/soil/water Not only can the children not consent to this risk, but also the Japanese government is continuing to cover up the risk because it “is not adequately monitoring radiation contamination of soil, food, water, and air and is not providing the parents with sufficient information to protect their children.” Virtually the same analysis of “unconscionable” medi-cal risks to children was provided by Toshiso Kosako—a scientific advisor who resigned from the Japanese government to protest the FD radiological harms imposed on Japanese children (Bradford et al., 2011; von Hippel, 2011;

Shrader-Frechette, 2011, 2012)

The continuing failure of the Japanese government both to advise parents how to protect their children, and to collect crucial radiation-exposure data is important Without data, the FD crisis cannot be fully understood, and people— especially children—cannot be protected Also, unless the data are collected immediately, they disappear, the crisis cannot be examined accurately, and parents/physicians will be less able to consent to government actions With-out continuing-monitoring data, government/industry can continue to deny the problem, deny medical/health coverage to victims, and deny their rights

to protection/informed consent After all, one cannot consent to risks that are misrepresented Although the Japanese government still has not released full reports about FD radiation releases, Hirosaki University scientists them-selves did measurements They warned that many FD victims have received four times the allowed 20 mSv dose, although the Japanese government said all doses were “far below levels that warrant concerns about human health.” The government also admits that the most damaging radiation is from inter-nal doses, from food and water Yet, its 20 mSv standard includes only exterinter-nal radiation and ignores internal contamination—resulting from isotopes such as cesium-134 and cesium-137, with a half-life of more than 30 years—that will continue for decades (Butler, 2011; Cyranoski, Brumfiel, & Nature Magazine,

2011; Shrader-Frechette, 2011, 2012)

12.7 CHILDREN AND NUCLEAR-RADIATION REGULATIONS

Given that children are both more sensitive to ionizing radiation and less able

to consent to it than adults are, one would think that regulations would better

protect children However, just as the FD accident imposed heavy EIJ radiation-dose burdens on children, so do normal radiation-radiation-dose regulations In at least two ways, current radiation-dose regulations force children to be EIJ victims First, given children’s much higher radiosensitivity, international/national radiation standards do not provide more-protective radiation regulations for them Instead, children have the same radiation-dose limits as members of the public Why? Regulators assess hazards of ionizing radiation in terms of the reference-man model As the International Commission on Radiation Pro-tection (ICRP) put it: “Reference man is defined as being between 20 and

30 years of age, weighing 70 kg [154 pounds], is 170 cm [5 feet 7 inches] in height, and lives in a climate with an average temperature of from 10° to

20 °C He is a Caucasian and is a Western European or North American in habitat and custom” (Makhijani, Smith, & Thorne, 2006) Reference-man models for radiation risks focus only on adult male cancer risks, although children’s cancer risk can be up to about 40 times higher, and women’s cancer risk is roughly 50-percent higher, when all receive the same radiation dose

reference-man model addresses only cancer, it ignores noncancer radiation harms such

as increased genetic defects, immune-system damage, blood diseases, sponta-neous abortion, birth defects, and neonatal mortality (Makhijani et al., 2006) The reference-man model likewise ignores the permanent 25-point drop in drop for every sievert (100 rem) of in-utero ionizing-radiation exposure dur-ing critical weeks (8–26) of brain formation (ICRP, 2005; NRC/NAS, 1990) Obviously, current radiation standards do not adequately protect children Second, although regulations can provide the fetus with special protec-tions, international standards protect them less well than adults According

to regulations of the US and those of some other nations, female nuclear workers need not declare their pregnancy unless they choose If they do, they and their fetus are allowed to receive radiation doses of 500 mrem/year (not

5000 rem/year that other US radiation workers may receive); however, this fetal dose is 5 times higher than 100 mrem total/year, what members of the public may receive, and 5 times higher than the fetus may receive in much

of Europe, e.g Germany (Makhijani et al., 2006) The obvious question is why US/Japanese fetuses are less well protected than European, and why US/ Japanese children are less well protected than adults, when infants can be up

to 38 times more radiosensitive than adults (Makhijani et al., 2006) Indeed,

if fetuses/infants were protected at the same level as US members of the public, their annual radiation dose will be a maximum of (1/38)(100 mrem),

or 2.6 rem Because the US/Japanese fetal-radiation standard = 500 rem/year, the fetus is 500/2.6 or 192 times less protected than adults Yet if children are the most vulnerable members of society, if some current radiation regulations protect them less well than adults, this suggests that radiation regulations violate EJ They follow the preferences of the powerful, not the needs of the vulnerable (Shrader-Frechette, 2011, 2012)

12.8 NUCLEAR WORKERS: FD EIJ VICTIMS

Another major group of EIJ victims are nuclear workers They are allowed to receive much higher doses of ionizing radiation than members of the public Yet, typically, only low socioeconomic-status people tend to take such high risks (Shrader-Frechette, 2011, 2012)

Although many FD nuclear workers are heroes, having sacrificed to save others, many also are EIJ victims They are likely unable to genuinely consent

to higher radiation doses that can harm them and their families Why not? Post-accident FD workers are mainly unskilled, temporary workers who are often forced, by economic necessity, to accept whatever jobs they can get Indeed, even without an accident, 80–89 percent of all 83,000 Japanese nuclear workers are temporary contract workers who receive about 16 times more radiation than normal radiation workers—whose doses are recorded They often are offered

$350 to $1000 per day, for work that lasts only a few minutes because the radia-tion doses are so high (Kakuchi, 2011; Shrader-Frechette, 2007)

Several additional problems suggest that, after the FD disaster, nuclear-cleanup workers have been EIJ victims One reason is that, only weeks after the accident began, the Japanese government raised the allowable, post-FD radiation doses, for plant workers, to 250 mSv/year (Tabuchi, 2011)−250 times what members of the public can receive Because FD onsite doses were at least

as high as 500 mSv/hour, and even higher inside the plant, this means some

FD workers received their exposure limit of 250 mSv/year within seconds/ minutes According to the classic IARC radiation dose–response curve (Cardis

et al., 2005, 2007), 25 percent of the fatal cancers among FD workers, receiv-ing 250 mSv/year, would be caused by this FD exposure Yet because of the cumulative nature of radiation risk, some FD workers must have had cumula-tive doses higher than 250 mSv For instance, for 30-year-old FD workers, normal-background radiation alone—without any X-rays, and so on—already has given them 3 mSv/year, or 90 mSv cumulative background dose Even without any medical exposures, IARC indicates that these 30-year-olds who received 250 mSv from FD could attribute 34 percent of their fatal cancers to

FD radiation

If FD-accident workers were never told that their exposure would likely kill many of them prematurely, they obviously did not give genuine consent to FD risks and are EIJ victims If they were told, this also suggests EIJ Why? It is improbable that hundreds of mentally healthy persons could agree to roughly

a one-third chance of death, in exchange for temporary work—for seconds or minutes—that pays only $170–$350/hour Rational workers might risk death for

a huge sum, to feed their families, but risking death for a one-time, $170–$350 payment seems less likely Under such circumstances, it again seems probable that many FD-accident workers did not genuinely consent and are EIJ victims

In the poor Japanese economy, they simply may have been desperate for work (Beauchamp & Childress, 1989; Faden & Beauchamp, 1986; Kakuchi, 2011;

Tabuchi, 2011)