Angler Who Died of Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia Didn't Live Inside 30 Km Radius of Fuku-I

and didn't eat fish inside the 30 kilometer radius, according to the irate journalist who had written about the angler cum journalist in the Rod and Reel magazine.

As it stands, for now, the Japanese blog that said he did wasn't quoting from the actual article in the magazine but from his/her (probably his) own concern for radiation.

False information that he was living inside the 30-kilometer zone and eating fish caught inside the zone quickly spread via tweets and blogs and message boards, and just as quickly it was debunked via tweets and blogs, just like the story about neutron beams detected in the Tokyo Metropolitan area. Self-correcting mechanism of the Internet. (The neutron beam story is more convoluted than this one, but that may be a later post.)

It's not that the areas outside 30-kilometer radius is any safer than inside, as the radiation contamination in Fukushima City or Date City (both are now found with radioactive cesium rice that exceeded the national provisional safety limit) shows.

The angler/journalist Abe did die of acute lymphocytic leukemia on September 16 at the age of 24 after having been hospitalized on August 26. His friends and people at the magazine didn't think it was because of the nuke accident, but they do not rule that out. It is unknown at this point, they say. (If you read Japanese, you can read about it on this site.)

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Worker Died of Acute Leukemia, TEPCO Said in Aug 30 Press Conference

But the doctor assured the company that the death had nothing to do with having worked at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.

The unnamed worker died in early August, after having worked at Fukushima I for about a week. TEPCO's Matsumoto says the company does not know where the worker had worked before he came to Fukushima I. He's from one of TEPCO's 1st-tier subcontractors.

Since the death has nothing to do with having worked in Fukushima I Nuke Plant, TEPCO is not going to track the worker's past work history or conduct further investigation. TEPCO will not release personal information about the worker, either.

The radiation exposure of the worker was 0.5 millisievert external radiation, and zero internal radiation for the duration of his work at Fukushima I.

Additional information from Mainichi (8/30/2011):

The worker was in his 40s. At Fukushima I, his work included manning the rest area and radiation control of the workers. There was no abnormal reading of white blood cells before he started to work at Fukushima I. He worked for about a week in August, and fell ill. He was diagnosed with acute leukemia, and died at the hospital. His company reported his death to TEPCO on August 16.

TEPCO's Matsumoto emphasized that the death was a private matter, and TEPCO had no intention of investigating it further now that the doctor denied any relationship between the death and the work at Fukushima I.

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