#Radioactive Japan: Food Items Exceeding City's Safety Limit Fed to Schoolchildren in Aizu Wakamatsu City in Fukushima

Let's all repeat the familiar refrain now: "There is no effect on health."

Officials in Aizu Wakamatsu City, in the Aizu region (or the western third) of Fukushima Prefecture, are so certain that they say so, without "immediate" between "no" and "effect".

The lunches with the contaminated food items had already been served and consumed in the 1st semester of the school year (April - July). One of the same items were also served in school lunches in Koriyama City in Fukushima, in Nakadori (middle third of Fukushima) where radiation levels are much higher than Aizu.

Irony is that two items that exceeded Aizu Wakamatsu City's safety limit of 10 Bq/kg were from outside Fukushima - soybeans from Miyagi and pickled plums from Gunma.

From Fukushima Minyu, local newspaper in Fukushima (8/21/2012):

若松の学校給食で市基準値超の食材使用

School lunches in [Aizu] Wakamatsu used food items that exceeded the city's safety limit

会津若松市の学校で１学期に出された学校給食に、市が定める１キロ当たり１０ベクレルを超える放射性セシウムを含んだ食材が使われていたことが２０日、分かった。食材は宮城県産の冷凍大豆と群馬県産の梅干しで、それぞれ１６ベクレルと１７ベクレル。いずれも県学校給食会（福島市）から仕入れた食材で、当初入荷したものの代替品の検査漏れが原因。

It was disclosed on August 20 that the food items that exceeded the city's safety limit of 10 becquerels/kg for radioactive cesium had been used in the school lunches served in schools in Aizu Wakamatsu City in the first semester. The food items were frozen soybeans from Miyagi Prefecture, and pickled plums ("umeboshi") from Gunma Prefecture, and contained 16 becquerels/kg and 17 becquerels/kg of cesium respectively. They were both among items purchased from the Prefectural School Lunch Association (in Fukushima City), and they were substitutions which somehow escaped testing.

同じ冷凍大豆は、独自基準を１０ベクレル未満と定める郡山市の学校での使用も確認されている。会津若松市教委は同給食会に検査態勢の改善を申し入れた。また、保護者への説明については２学期の始まりに合わせて知らせる方針で、「人体に影響を及ぼすレベルではないことを説明し、理解を得たい」としている。

The same frozen soybeans have been confirmed to have been used in school lunches in Koriyama City whose own safety standard is also 10 Bq/kg [of radioactive cesium]. The Aizu Wakamatsu City Board of Education has asked the Fukushima Prefectural School Lunch Association to improve the testing. The Board plans to notify the parents at the beginning of the second semester [= usually the beginning of September], and hopes to gain their understanding that it was not the level that would affect the human body.

In a way, Aizu Wakamatsu City is better than most schools in Tohoku and Kanto regions for testing individual items instead of mashing the whole serving and measure, which will not isolate items with high radioactivity.

As many in Japan have noted since the start of the nuclear accident last year, the school lunch program, which in many schools in Japan is mandatory, has always been a dumping ground for substandard or excess food inventories. It has been a profitable business for food distributors with long-term contracts with the School Lunch Association, a public-service (quasi-government) corporation that have provided jobs to many who "have descended from heaven (government positions)". So why change, even after the worst nuclear accident in the country?

If you recall, about this time last year, the mayor of Yokohama (who was by the way the president of BMW Tokyo) ignored the plea from the concerned parents and kept feeding the city's school children with beef that may have contained radioactive cesium that exceeded 500 Bq/kg (provisional safety limit until April 1, 2012). I guess she couldn't pass up a great deal - bargain price on Tohoku beef which used to sell at a premium before the Fukushima accident.

If you also recall, Professor Kunihiko Takeda wrote a poetic post for his blog in early September last year, soon after radioactive materials in food items, particularly for children in school lunches, began to catch people's attention. He was attacked for "fear-mongering". He had been pleading the adults to protect children. In vain, I'm sorry to say. Professor Takeda wrote in his post in September last year (my translation, from my post on 9/5/2011):

A girl doesn't talk...

She doesn't talk. With her clear eyes she looks at everything her mother does. At her side, a boy with bright eyes is excited with the train just passing by.

A middle-aged man shouts. Why can't I sell contaminated vegetables? I took great pains growing them. What about our livelihood?

The girl doesn't talk. She quietly eats her school lunch as it is served. Even if the vegetables are contaminated, she takes in the radioactive materials because she trusts adults.

The angry middle-aged man, with the help of the governor and the board of education, shipped the contaminated vegetables that were sold as foodstuff for the school lunches, and he made the living. The government and TEPCO pretended they didn't know, and the media was afraid to report.

The girl who didn't talk is now sick in bed. Who could have saved this girl who didn't talk?

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