Tragedy in Japan

The hurricane and tsunami in Japan have been shocking to watch. In this era of cell phone cameras and the internet, there has been no shortage of shocking footage of the earthquake, the water and the destruction. The subsequent nuclear reactor disaster has also been ominous. The Japan nuclear disaster is different from Chernobyl, given that the containment vessel is still intact in the case of the Japanese, but my mind keeps going back to Chernobyl and thinking about, especially, all the excess cancer from that event. It is timely then that the National Institutes of Health released an updated report that the higher cancer risk after Chernobyl continues to this day. According to the press release, "higher absorption of radiation from I-131 led to an increased risk for thyroid cancer that has not seemed to diminish over time." This study included over 12,500 people who lived in three cities near the Chernobyl site, and had thyroid radioactivity levels determined within a few months after the blast so each individual's radiation dose could be determined. All participants were under 18 years of age at the time of enrollment. They also had routine screening for thyroid cancer in the intervening 25 years. One has to wonder what correlates we can draw from this study to what is currently unfolding in Japan.