Friday, August 12, 2011

Decrease in White Blood Cells, Headache, Nausea in a Hospital in Sendai City, Miyagi

Tweets from a nurse (my very good guess from her tweets) in a large hospital in Sendai City, Miyagi Prefecture on August 10:

原因不明の白血球低下、頭痛、嘔吐増えてます。既存の診断名つけられて治療しても効果なしのケースうちの病院でもみかけます。もちろん全部放射能の影響というつもりはありませんが、これも事実です。

Increasing number of patients with unexplainable decrease in white blood cells, headache, nausea. They are diagnosed for existing illness and undergo treatment, but they don't respond to the treatment at all. I've seen those cases in my hospital. I'm not saying they are all because of the radiation exposure, but I'm telling you what I'm seeing.

患者さん洗髪すると、髪が束になってごっそり抜けます。それを見るたびほんとに怖いです。「なーんで白血球下がってるんだろうなーーー」なんてのんきにいってる場合ですか先生。治療できない人がこれから増えていきますよ。

When we wash their hair, it comes off in a clump. It is really scary. The doctor says, "I really wonder why the white blood cell count is down..." Doctor, don't be so relaxed about it. There is going to be more and more people who don't respond to treatment.

She suspects internal radiation from hospital meals, which the in-patients have no choice but eat.

The Japanese government can now create another "Special District for Medical Research" in Miyagi Prefecture, in addition to the one in Fukushima.

44 comments:

netudiant said...

Surely there are scanners for radiation exposure available in the hospital. They should be used.
Declining white blood cells and hair loss in clumps, if due to radiation exposure, would imply large exposures, perhaps 1000 milli Sievert or more. If this is radiation related, these people should also be suffering from severe diarrhea and sharply increased mortality.
The contamination reported in the food to date, (which may of course have been inadequately tested,) has been much too low to have these consequences. If the nurses impressions are correct, there is something much worse in the environment than anything reported to date.

Anonymous said...

" If the nurses impressions are correct, there is something much worse in the environment than anything reported to date."

Mind you, she is not "interpreting", but just observing symtoms/facts. And we know that SPEEDI data is still being withheld. So we cannot really know what exposure levels where a few weeks ago.

Anonymous said...

maybe they ingested some plutonium or some other very dangerous elements ?

It's such a shame that no media reports about fukushima... it's like... gone... who cares...

Anonymous said...

TEPCRO says "you rumor monger"

akaider said...

from chernobyl we know that it will take about one year for most sickness / cancer to show up - we're near the 6 month mark

Anonymous said...

get ready everyone in japan, it is going to get ugly and rocky from now on.

Anonymous said...

Anyone who implies that the Fukushima accident is not a big deal (yet) is a a paid-off prick for the nuclear industry. AVERAGE PEOPLE EITHER "CARE" OR THEY ARE "INDIFFERENT"--no average citizen is going to go on an anti-nuclear website and try to downplay radiation fears...average people just would not care enough to do that...sorry...

Anonymous said...

While I believe this is the worst disaster in human history and I left my life in Japan because of it, I would like to know if this particular story is actually real or simply rumor. If people's hair is already falling out this soon the contamination would have to be much higher than being reported. If this is the case the next 1-2 years are going to be a horror just beginning.

Just FYI. I left after living in Japan for 15 years because I did not trust the government and knew they would be dishonest about the information. I am, though, completely shocked at the willful spread of contamination throughout Japan. It is genocide of their own people. I am still in shock and disbelief everyday even though I am no longer in Japan.

Anonymous said...

We know that:

(1) There are many unusually intense hot spots, for example, where radioactive material has been deposited by rainwater flowing into puddles.

(2) Almost certainly, some of these hot spots are adjacent to (for example) the outside walls of bedrooms.

And it seems very likely that:

(3) The cumulative effects of the resulting exposure could explain the reported effects on patients. Delays of weeks between exposure and (for example) hair loss are standard in radiation sickness.

Query: How many Sieverts would a person be exposed to after sleeping for a month or more next to one of the (measured and documented) hot spots in areas where people are still living?

Also, what portion of an exposed Japanese population with low-level radiation sickness would go to a hospital?

Note that radiation scanners can detect ongoing internal radiation exposure, but cannot detect previous external radiation exposure.

Fall Out Man! said...

Good point made above, there is an army of full time propagandists working on posting now.

With regard to the dosage at which hair falls out. 1 Sievert (1000 milli sieverts) according to Wikipedia when I first looked at it gives a 50/50 chance of death. In fact hair falls out at far lower levels of radiation than that. But if it is radiation that has made their hair fall out, then tragically, there will be other effects as well, their long term future would be grim.

If its internal radiation (which is likely) then that is horrific. If its the hospital food then that is just evil. It cannot be ruled out, since the Japanese government was feeding school kids contaminated beef for lunch since it was the cheapest food they could buy. No doubt the profit motive will run even deeper in hospitals.

It would be evidence to blame the food if the nurses observed this pattern in greater numbers amongst long term patients. That might indicate whether it is the hospital food, or whether these people are being poisoned before arriving at hospital. Presumably the Nurse is blaming the food for a good reason.

Fall Out Man! said...

With regard to the idea that it could be exposure from say a hot spot, the patient would have to be very close to it. Radiation damage drops off very quickly away from the source. I remember that radiation around some drain grates in japan where contamination had washed down the drain was very high. High enough to kill a person lying on the grate over the course of a month. But that's lying on it, so its hard to see how that could affect many patients in a hospital. If people live in a host spot they could get heavily contaminated before entering hospital, and then get worse in hospital. That's something that sounds more likely.

The food angle the nurse suggested does sound reasonable. You could get a situation where someone makes money by selling obviously dangerous food as normal to a hospital, or conversely, the state which constantly talks down problems may have ordered hospitals to purchase bad food to help keep food producers selling produce as normal. I saw on another site an "unsubstantiated rumor" that some hotels had been told by a council to buy food from contaminated areas to help local producers. That sort of thing can be a "win/win" with the buyer saving money, and the producer staying in business. Not such a win for customers and patients though :-(

Anonymous said...

Well, is it possible that those in the government who decide where the most irradiated 'foods' go thought they could send them to a hospital because illnesses or deaths there would be attributed to originating diseases (the reason why they were in the hospital in the first place) and if detected they could claim contamination was minor but that patients over reacted to them physically because they were already ill but that it presents NO HARM TO HEALTH for an otherwise 'normal' person? But maybe that little experiment got away from them or they over estimated their own brilliance? Yeah...I begin to think the most evil, vile thoughts because I've been reading the material that has been translated and this is basically the only way I can understand the cruel decisions being made by Japanese officials. The only way.

Anonymous said...

It has started...

I was personnaly waiting for the first "abortions" and newborns with diseases. So at end the end of this year, and beginning next year.

I guess it's going faster...

It's tragic to know what will happen, eventually, to those poor people. But on the other hand, we need those "deads".

It's the only way the corrupted japanese government will be forced to acknowledge the scale of the disaster and start to take proper actions.

To save the rest.

Remember : it's like 1945... No way at that time they would acknowledge their defeat. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were needed to bring them, and their pathological behavior, down.

Sorry, I know it's a sensitive issue in Japan. But I see strange "cultural" parallels between then and now (save face, lie on a perpetual basis etc.)...

When the dead corpses start accumulating, then the japanese authorities will be forced to come clean.

It's the only way, if we wish to save some people.

The era of lies must end in Japan. It is just unbearable.

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

The nurse who posted these tweets seems to know what she's talking about. In answering the skeptical person who said it could be just from the stress, she wrote:

"It's the matter of probability. The problem is that we can't prove it's from radiation. Each person reacts differently to the same radiation treatment, for example, and that's the way it is. Different susceptibility to radiation. So it is not the matter of how high or low the dosage is. Can we dismiss it because the dosage is low?"

Anonymous said...

I have chicken skin reading all this, we all know that is is only beginning, Japanese government is evil, they are murders, criminals. And very strange coincidence is that head of International court and International Atomic Agency are Japanese. Japan needs riots, go now on the streets and kick out these criminals, they should do it because it is not Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is not Chernobily, it is much more worse. Stand up Japanese for your kids, for your health, for your life because if you don't, government will kill you slowly ! Mentality should be changed, awake up humans being and stand up for your freedom and rights !

Anonymous said...

Health Effects of Radiation. Uncensored report dated April 2011 of Chernobyl. See;
http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/chernob_report2011webippnw.pdf

Anonymous said...

Looks like a signficant number of people in N. Japan will be considered "Liquidators", a term coined by Russian government for the 100,000 soldiers/clean up workers who were in the main contaminated area. There were many more, but of the core carbon based workers, most expired from disease, shunned by healthy citizens. Even their families suffered -considered unmarriable, unemployable.

See the movie "Day After Tomorrow"..a line across the country was drawn and the ones SOUTH of the line told to evacuate. NORTH of the line, they were considered terminal, and not told. Is this similar to what is happening in Japan?

Anonymous said...

"-- no average citizen is going to go on an anti-nuclear website and try to downplay radiation fears..."
.. nor is an average citizen going to make efforts to ignore radiation sickness in the people they mix with. These are the ones.

Anonymous said...

Living in Japan for 20 years, and even though Hyogo ain't too safe, it's still livable, but again, it's the food and supplies that you can't tell where it's from that's sad... I had my few last meals before I leave again outside of the country for University.... I'm leaving my family behind who don't really want to listen to any of this kind of news, my mother is battling cancer for four years, my sister has developmental delays... and now this.

ファウスト(メス) said...

緊急:私に連絡してください。

東京電力。のファック それら。

netudiant said...

Totally agree with 'anonymous' on the issue of food traceability, or rather the lack thereof.
Here in the US, we see it in less threatening form when Cascadia Farms, a high end brand originating in the Pacific Northwest, now sells frozen 'organic" soybean grown in China. The melamine equivalent is probably added at no extra charge. But at least we still get some idea of where our food is coming from.

The logical outcome of the Japanese policy of obfuscation, where radioactive foods are transshipped to be sold in clean markets, is that nobody will trust anything from Japan. Not even the Japanese themselves.
Supermarket chains will have to invest in testing gear at the consumer level to reassure buyers that they are getting clean food. I think food importers will do very well in the coming years. Intelligent US producers are probably ramping up production of Japanese style rice as we speak

Anonymous said...

The clock tolls for all those who have chosen to ignore the devil in the city. He unleashes his evil throughout every square inch of people's lives.

Radiation is not some road dust you can brush off your clothes. Your lungs breath the hot particles in and, game is over at that point.

The facts of what will be happening to the Japanese people can only be covered up for so long. TEPCO and the Jap Government will have no choice in hiding the seriousness of the dying public.

Nuclear power is finished! Because no one will be alive to use it! Get it TEPCO? You killed your market off! Idiots!

FigNewton said...

Nurse said, "It's the matter of probability. The problem is that we can't prove it's from radiation..."

It seems like statistical tracking of the patients from the last 7 months could provide some proof. I would assume a hospital to have blood test data from when the patient enters the hospital. If the white blood cell count has changed in the last 5 months, and this is observed in many patients, that sampling could be evidence. Stick the data in Excel, make a timeline graph, bingo; A picture most people can understand.

Even if she (could be he, you know. ;)) independently started tracking on her own, it would be a start. Maybe that's not 'legal', but tweeting personal observations at a hospital without some sort of evidence brings out the pessimist in me.. It's not that I don't believe this is happening, or will happen. I guess tweets alone just don't do it for me. :)

Anonymous said...

First of all, the above tweet from an anonymous "nurse" contains nothing regarding possibility of the illnesses being caused by "internal food". Second, an anonymous "tweet"???? Yeah, I read it on the internet, so it must be true. Not saying that the potential for something like this occurring is not there. It certainly is, but this one has so many holes in it from the start.

Anonymous said...

@anon at 5:27PM, Oh yes, the nuclear fuel totally melted down and through was such a malicious rumor floating on the net only, so was the depleted uranium depot catching fire. Radioactive plume raining down in Fukushima City was another baseless rumor. Where do you want to read it so that it's true to you? Yomiuri?

Anonymous said...

The nurse is posting an observation which serves as an indicator to the rest of us. She isn't obliged to provide proof or analysis. That's for others to do if they need to. It's important that someone publicizes these observations. Sure, it could be a lie, but then many other things could be untrue as well.

FigNewton said...

Of course she's not obliged to provide proof. But if she can, why not? There's a lot of conspiracy theories flying around as well. As someone living through this, I feel the scare mongering is just as bad as the lies from the government; it only adds to the distrust of the real data and creates unnecessary fear.

An ounce of bullshit can sour a pound of truth, IMO.

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

@FigNewton, from her other tweets, I don't think she is trying to cause scare out of nothing. She's relaying her observation, and seems to be thinking of sneaking out some hospital food for testing. If she is caught, though, she can be fired.

Back in March or April, I was accused of scare mongering when I posted the air radiation level in Tokyo was much higher than what the official number indicated. Turns out that the tweets and twitpics and USTREAM postings of amateur measurements were more accurate than the official Shinjuku number.

FigNewton said...

@ Ultra. Yeah, I understand. You've been very balanced and reliable. If she's doing more than tweet (test food, etc.), then she has my full respect and attention.

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

@FigNewton, be safe, protect your family, keep your sanity. I'm sure you're already doing that. Sometimes I doubt my sanity, as I can't believe most of the news coming out of Japan.

Anonymous said...

The problem of not trusting the Japanese government is the same problem in any country of not trusting any goddamned government, they all lie.

That said, in Japan the problem is deep, lying is acceptable, it is part of the culture, a form of self defense. In small tribes this is understandable but in a modern industrial capitalist society it creates problems.

Anonymous said...

How does anyone know it's a nurse from a hospital? It's an anonymous tweet ferchrissakes. People just seem ready to absorb any bad news as if it were porn. Sure, the J-government and TEPCO aren't telling us the entire story, that's obvious. But lending 100% credibility to an anonymous tweet portraying the worst of all fears is seriously an overreaction. If people are starting to show signs of radiation sickness, and I hope it isn't happening, it will come out soon enough (the sooner the better), and I know it's hard to sit and wait for it to be announced by a "reputable source", but to date, no reputable source has stated otherwise.

Anonymous said...

You don't need 100% credibility when you already know this is going to happen. What reaction do you fear?

Anonymous said...

"it will come out soon enough"

How exactly will it come out? On the 6pm NHK news showing people with hair falling out? The "reputable source" would be a fly on the wall in Fukushima hospitals, taking down the numbers and and providing water tight statistics that cannot be questioned?

You can bet that if this is really happening, there would be plenty of pressure of keeping it under wraps. Perhaps people have an allergy that lets their hair fall out, or use the wrong shampoo.

----

Heard an interesting comment today by filmmaker Hitomi Kamanaka (『ミツバチの羽音と地球の回転』) about how doctors in Japan are (deliberately) undereducated on radiation effects and symptoms. As the tweet says "The doctor says, "I really wonder why the white blood cell count is down…"" … go figure. Remember this is the country that had two nuclear bombs dropped on them and for decades did not really want to know what happened to the people who got the fallout. In fact, it pretended they didn't exist - deja vu.

Actual physics and radiobiology said...

Serious quantitative analysis follows, considering unverified reports but also well-known but disturbing facts:

IF there is acute radiation sickness in a (relatively) few people, as reported, then there must be intense radiation sources somewhere, intense enough to give those people a large cumulative exposure over a time measured in months. Is this plausible, or is it unlikely?

Radiation biology suggests that the exposure required to have hair loss and depressed white blood cell counts would be on the rough order of 1 Sv/month, or about 1 mSv/hr, over a period of a few months. This pattern of exposure would be more like cancer treatment than like a brief exposure. This would, in fact, be even more slow, but it would still produce the symptoms of acute exposure. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_radiation_syndrome#Signs_and_symptoms )

I don't think that this can be from food.

Note that the biological effects of radiation in a human being can increase for a month or more after exposure has stopped! An increase in radiation sickness symptoms while in a hospital would NOT imply a radiation source inside the hospital. A nurse might not know that, and therefore be misled by the evidence and look for the wrong problem (testing hospital food, which is unlikely to be the problem, rather than calling for tests of the places where those people lived).

If the cause were internal exposure at this level, it would require a body burden of MANY millions of Bq, and that would require consumption of food FAR more radioactive than the contaminated food we've been hearing about. Keep in mind that Cs washes out of the body in about 10 days, unless it is replaced, and keep in mind that natural K is a body burden of about 4,000 Bq, and is a fraction of background exposure.

Actual physics and radiobiology, part 2 said...

There's a much more likely explanation:

Take an area with Cs deposited at a density per unit area that results in the supposedly child-safe (!) level of 3 microSv/hr. (We know that many areas where people live are worse than this.) Assume that this Cs was deposited on a relatively non-porous surface, back in March, and washed into a drainage channel, mixed with a little bit of sediment. Some channels (or just small trickles of water flowing off the surface) would lead to low places, and deposit Cs there. Some of those low places would be, for example, under the floor of a wooden house.

This must have happened, probably in many places. Even more so with blockage of flow by earthquake debris, and people not going outside to do maintenance.

Now assume that a 30 x 30 meter area (or more!) drains water (rain or snow melt) and deposits the newly fallen radioactive dust/sediment into a 1 x 1 m (or more!) basin. Cs per unit area is concentrated by a factor of about 1000. The average radiation level of 3 microSv/hr becomes, at the drainage deposit, 3 milliSv/hr. This is about 3 Sv/month.

Imagine that the drainage deposit is under someone's bedroom. Eight hours/day exposure gives 1 milliSv/month, and white cell counts fall, and hair falls out.

Someone should find out where these patients live, and check the radiation levels there, especially where they sleep! Look for place where there may be drainage deposits.

This scenario is very plausible. It has actual numbers attached to it. I haven't seen any evidence of thorough surveys for small, intense hotspots. Drainage deposits must exist. They will be much hotter than the surrounding areas.

The likelihood of small, intense hotspots at drainage deposits calls for independent individuals doing some investigation and reporting hotspots, walking around and checking low spots. (Has this been done?) If they easily find some drainage deposit hotspots that are 0.1 mSv/hr, then there are probably a few that are much worse, some hidden under houses.

People should measure! People should move! Warning signs should be posted!

This is not an uninformed speculation or a baseless rumor, this is a natural expectation based on established facts about radionuclide levels, rain, and drainage patterns.

Actual physics and radiobiology said...

Please accept my apologies for the long post above. You can see why I thought that it was worth writing, and reading.

Anonymous said...

Maybe using alternative cancer treatment such as those here (http://www.cancertutor.com/) would help.

Anonymous said...

People should measure.
Warning signs should be posted.

It is the only option at this time.

Anonymous said...

@Actual physics and radiobiology, thanks for your post. That makes very logical sense. Anyone who is living in Japan please help everyone and do this. I would think this would be very instrumental in helping to break this coverup by the Jap and US government. It would get some good high quality info and facts out that the governments dont want released.

PepiSmartDog said...

Do NOT trust the gov! I have been working with groups trying to rescue over one million abandoned pets out of Fukushima.
The lies & cruelty from the gov & TEPCO are unfathomable ! April 21 gov declared to stave all remaining pets; no further rescues allowed;
Many still alive, only just.
Gov does not care about it's people (or pets) at all ! This is genocide !! Japanese people seem unable to fight back. Media shut down is part of the lie. Do NOT believe what they say !
I am the voice of starving pets inside Fukushima !

Anonymous said...

I sit and worry about normal life, I worry for my children, gurus come and go always promising a good and better life..... Soon, never now, its always going to get better tomorrow never today. I feel heartsick at the thought of the corruption and lies swilling around the world like the radiation. When the masses in Japan start to sicken and die, will they be hidden away and denied as is happening now. Everywhere I look there are major polluting disasters occuring but the world carries on the news is all celebrity, nothing to see at Fukushima, I don't know many people at all who are in the slightest concerned, they can't be they have a mortgage to pay and a life to live, its too short to worry they say. Yes bloody short and as in the Gulf area of US and elsewhere round the world getting shorter by the minute. Quick go out and buy another mobile phone games console and a tonne of sparkly shit, put your soul in the dustbin by the checkout.

Anonymous said...

we will see those firecrackers later; better at night... you know... with the glow.

Craig Taylor said...

Gosh, reading these comments gives me chill.


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