Japan: No health scare, say experts; alert on food imports
Scare text messages about “radiation hitting India” were circulated in several places on Tuesday but experts said there is absolutely no reason to panic.
The only alert came from the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), which asked its officers at Indian ports to test food imports —largely seafood —from Japan since March 11, 2011.
“It’s a surveillance measure,” FSSAI Chief Executive Officer V N Gaur told The Indian Express.
Joint secretary in the Department of Revenue has also been asked to advise all Customs points in the country where imported food is cleared to test samples. Once collected, the samples will be sent to Board of Radiation and Isotope Technology in Mumbai. “We do not want to take any chances,” said Gaur. “All fresh items are necessary to be tested. The earlier packaged items are all tested fine.”
Union Health Secretary K Chandramouli said there was nothing to panic. “We have not yet received any warning from the people monitoring the radiation, there is no need for issuing any advisory,” he said.Said Randeep Guleria, professor of medicine at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences: “The current direction of winds and the level of radiation being reported in millisieverts (mSv) does not suggesting that there is any risk as far as we are concerned.”
According to latest reports from Tokyo, radiation levels from the nuclear power plant damaged by last week's earthquake and resulting tsunami climbed to 400 mSv an hour briefly early Tuesday before falling to safer levels.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said that the most recently observed level was 0.6 mSv (1000 mSv = 1 Sv) an hour, equivalent to about six chest X-rays, after falling from 11.9 mSv six hours earlier.
A total dose of 0.5 Sv is considered to be a high dose and a dose of around 10 Sv is associated with deaths in humans,” said Guleria.
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