Thursday, March 24, 2011
Associated Press
TOKYO
Anxiety over Japan’s food and water supplies soared after warnings about radiation leaking from Japan’s tsunami-damaged nuclear- power plant into Tokyo’s tap water at levels unsafe for babies over the long term.
Residents cleared store shelves of bottled water after Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara said that levels of radioactive iodine in tap water were more than twice what is considered safe for babies. Officials begged those in the city to buy only what they need, saying hoarding could hurt the thousands of people without any water in areas devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” clerk Toru Kikutaka said, surveying the downtown Tokyo supermarket where the entire stock of bottled water sold out almost immediately after the news broke Wednesday, despite a limit of two, 2-liter bottles per customer.
The unsettling new development affecting Japan’s largest city, home to around 13 million people, added to growing fears over the nation’s food supply.
Radiation from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant has seeped into raw milk, seawater and 11 kinds of vegetables, including broccoli, cauliflower and turnips, from areas around the plant.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it was halting imports of Japanese dairy and produce from the region near the facility. Hong Kong said it would require that Japan perform safety checks on meat, eggs and seafood before accepting those products, and Canada said it would upgrade controls on imports of Japanese food products by requiring documents verifying their safety.
Concerns also spread to Europe. In Iceland, officials said they measured trace amounts of radioactive iodine in the air but assured residents it was “less than a millionth” of what was found in European countries in the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
The crisis already is emerging as the world’s most-expensive natural disaster on record, likely to cost up to $309 billion, according to a new government estimate. Police estimate that more than 18,000 people were killed.
The overall situation at the Fukushima plant 140 miles north of Tokyo remains of serious concern, the International Atomic Energy Agency said. The deposition of radioactive iodine and cesium varies across 10 prefectures on a day-to-day basis, but “the trend is generally upward,” said Graham Andrew, senior adviser to IAEA chief Yukiya Amano.