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A STUDY published this week shows that children living near the site of the the Fukushima nuclear disaster have a 20 to 50 times greater risk of thyroid cancer.
Most of the 370,000 children in Fukushima prefecture have been given ultrasound checkups since the March 2011 meltdowns at the tsunami-ravaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant.
The most recent statistics, released in August, show that thyroid cancer is suspected or confirmed in 137 of those children, a number that rose by 25 from a year earlier.
Elsewhere, the disease occurs in only about one or two of every million children per year by some estimates.
“This is more than expected and emerging faster than expected,” lead author Toshihide Tsuda said. “This is 20 times to 50 times what would be normally expected.”
The Japanese government claims that the apparent surge is because increased precautionary screening has led to diagnoses that would otherwise be missed.
