UK's Guardian's Blooper: "38 Microsieverts" Somehow Turned Into "38 Millisieverts" for Fukushima School Yard

Let's see if (and how fast) the thought police from Japan descends on Guardian.. The Japanese government and the MSM press already dissed UK's Daily Mail as "sensational", but the paper has actually been covering the earthquake/tsunami/nuke plant accident in a very factual yet compassionate way with excellent photos.

From Guardian's article on May 2, 2011 titled "Fukushima parents dish the dirt in protest over radiation levels" by Jonathan Watts:

.......

A group claiming to represent 250 parents in Fukushima visited the upper house of parliament and presented government officials with a bag of radioactive dirt from the playground of one of the affected schools. A geiger counter clicked over it with a reading of 38 millisieverts.

That's an astonishing number, 38 millisieverts.

Except in this case it's not what the reading was. It was 38 MICROSIEVERTS. It's still awfully higher than what the national and prefectural governments have been telling the residents in Fukushima, but not to the extent of 38 MILLISIEVERTS.

For those of you who understand Japanese (including the writer at Guardian, perhaps?), here's the video of the event. About 9 minutes into the video, they put the dirt in front of the bureaucrat and put the geiger counter on it, and read off the number, "38 microsieverts":

http://youtu.be/2TS9yrUtwRQ

As of today (May 4), it is still "millisievert" at Guardian. Guardian is not alone in insisting on the story that it has published, though. As I've posted before (4/24/11 post), Japan's NHK WORLD (English) reported that "300 millisieverts per hour of radiation was detected in debris on a nearby mountainside", where in reality "From debris found on the side of the Reactor 3 building facing the mountain, 300 millisieverts/hour radiation was detected" (as in the original NHK Japanese news).

After 10 days, the radioactive debris is still "on a nearby mountainside" at NHK WORLD, and no sign of the Japanese thought police even aware of the NHK's blooper.

Tweet