Minami Soma Assemblyman: "5.57 Million Bq/kg Cesium from Soil, and People Are Cleaning Out Their Homes"

Part of Minami Soma City in Fukushima was inside the "no-entry zone" but the designation was lifted as of April 16 this year and people are returning. One such area is Odaka District, and as NHK reported, the returning residents are being assisted by volunteers from all over Japan in cleaning up the damage from the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Minami Soma Assemblyman Koichi Ooyama says he went and collected soil samples (what he calls "black dust") in locations in Minami Soma, including several in Odaka District after the no-entry zone designation was lifted. He had them tested by the city's laboratory for radioactive cesium, and the result, as posted on his blog (5/10/2012) is shocking.  The maximum is 5,570,000 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium in soil in Odaka District. In the same district, half a million becquerels/kg of cesium in cow dung was also found.

Mr. Ooyama lists those with high radioactive cesium content, because the numbers are not in sequence. English labels are by me. (Unit is bq/kg, dry weight):

①1,320,000 原町区牛越土壌 Haramachi District, soil
②1,960,000 鹿島区橲原土壌 Kashima District, soil
⑥5,570,000 小高区金谷土壌 Odaka District, soil
⑧　　16,200 原町区国見町土壌 Haramachi District, soil
⑪　793,000 小高区上町土壌 Odaka District, soil
⑫　430,000 小高区本町土壌 Odaka district, soil
⑬　583,000 小高区本町土壌 Odaka district, soil
⑭2,970,000 小高区金谷土壌 Odaka district, soil
⑰　522,000 小高区金谷牛ふん Odaka district, cow dung

Even if these samples are from areas where radioactive cesium is getting highly concentrated, I haven't seen numbers like this anywhere else in Fukushima outside the immediate vicinity of Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.

NHK News said the volunteers helping the home owners in Odaka District were scooping out the sludges - probably highly contaminated sludge - with hardly any protection other than flimsy masks and gloves. Who is going to be responsible if anything should happen to these volunteers later? Volunteers themselves.

Assemblyman Ooyama screams, "And they're going to do what? Spring athletic meets? Swimming pool opening? I can't take it any more!"

(For the mind-numbing routine in post-Fukushima Japan in spring and summer, see my previous post.)

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