It was history. On March 11, 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake, magnitude 9.0, struck 80 miles off the Northeast Coast of Japan, generating a series of tsunami waves, some of them 40 feet high.
Racing outward from the epicentre at speeds that approached up to 500 miles (800 km) per hour, and with only a few minutes warning, the monster waves hit nearby shorelines, leaving dozens of villages along nearly 200 miles of coast heavily damaged or completely destroyed.
The waves also struck the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, which is 150 miles north of Tokyo. Three of the six reactors at the plant suffered severe core damage and released hydrogen and radioactive materials.
In desperation, emergency crews at the plant had to resort to using seawater to cool down the damaged reactors.
Unfortunately, a lot of that water washed into the Pacific resulting in the largest accidental release of radiation to the ocean in history.
Worse yet, some airborne radioactive material from the explosions, as well as fire from the plant, fell onto the ocean’s surface, mixing into the water as well. So, too, did subsequent leaks from tanks on the site that contained treated water.
The official total for the number of those confirmed dead or listed as missing from the disaster was at least 20,000.
Although there were no deaths or cases of radiation sickness from the nuclear accident — most of the deaths were caused by drowning — more than 100,000 people were evacuated from their homes as a preventative measure.
Did anyone say ‘food safety’?
With such a devastating disaster to deal with — and even to comprehend — food safety was not at the top of the list of concerns. At least not right away.
But it didn’t take long for people to start worrying about the fish and other seafood that could be affected by the radiation in the water — and even some agricultural crops due to radiation in the air — particularly from the Fukushima region.
Not surprisingly, some countries banned some exports from the Fukushima region. For example, in March, 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it would stop all milk products and vegetable and fruit products imported from the Japan’s prefectures of Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi and Gunma from entering the U.S. in response to public fears about radiation from Japan’s crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
Japan also placed restrictions on its own foods, including spinach and milk that were produced in two provinces around the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Food inspectors detected iodine and cesium in the food, two of the more dangerous radioactive byproducts that are feared to have been released from the reactors in Fukushima.
High levels of cesium can damage cells and put many people at higher risk of developing other kinds of cancer. And high levels of iodine that can be absorbed through the milk can accumulate in the thyroid gland and cause thyroid cancer.
Many other countries also levied strict restrictions on food imports from Japan, particularly from the Fukushima region, based on consumers’ concerns about potential radioactive contamination in seafood and agricultural products.
Food-safety improvements, but then . . .
In an attempt to win back trading partners, as well as to protect the health of their own people, the Japanese government adopted rigorous radiation testing protocols for all food products from the affected areas, making sure they met with international safety standards.
As a result, many countries, including the United States, have gradually lifted their food import restrictions. By 2023, following years of testing and compliance with safety standards, 90 percent percent of countries that originally imposed bans on Japanese food have since lifted them.
However, things began to get rocky — very rocky — when in August 2023, Japan started releasing treated radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima-Dailchi power plant into the ocean. The release is expected to continue for 40 years.
The treated water has gone through the Advanced Liquid Processing System at Fukushima, which removes radioactive material, other than tritium, from the wastewater before it is released.
According to a study, published in Environmental Science and Technology, Fukushima contaminated water contains 63 non-tritium radionuclides. Once incorporated into organisms, these radionuclides accumulate in different organs and humans can ingest them through seafood consumption
Research after the April 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster found that radionuclides accumulate in other foods, notably beef, berries, mushrooms, milk, soft cheeses, tuna and mussels.
According to a study, published in Environmental Science and Technology, Fukushima contaminated water contains 63 non-tritium radionuclides. Once incorporated into organisms, these radionuclides accumulate in different organs and humans, which they can ingest through seafood consumption.
Scientists said because of the migratory behavior of some marine species and the international distribution of seafood, the migration speed of radionuclides carried by organisms may exceed that of ocean currents.
They also pointed out that at 1,000 days of discharge, certain countries and regions may face risk values hundreds or thousands of times higher than the accepted benchmark because of bioaccumulation, migration and seafood circulation.
In other words, even though the Pacific Ocean is a huge body of water, diffusion of the treated water into it is only part of the picture. Risks to the environment and public health are an important part of the picture.
Or as University of Hawaii Professor Bob Richmond points out, this dilution argument is specious.
“The ocean is not a sterile aquarium,” he said at a congressional briefing. “Once these radionuclides go into the ocean, they are taken up. . . throughout the food web, and they can be bioaccumulated and biomagnified in organisms.”
In other words, they accumulate and magnify inside us and our children, where they may damage cells and organs for generations.”
As for geographical considerations, regions with larger seafood import volumes, such as China, the United States, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand face higher risks.
Protests
Not surprisingly, almost immediately after the treated contaminated water was released into the ocean, protesters, bearing signs such as “Don’t throw radioactive contaminated water into the sea,” appeared outside the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s headquarters.
And not long after the release of the contaminated water, China, Japan’s largest importer of fish, suspended the import of aquatic products from Japan.
China certainly didn’t mince words about this. Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin accused Tokyo of being “extremely selfish and irresponsible” by going ahead with the disposal of the nuclear-contaminated water, saying that the ocean should be treated as a “common good for humanity, not a sewer.”
Import restrictions by China, Hong Kong and Russia on aquatic products from Japan after the discharge of Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) treated water from the Fukushima nuclear plant was discussed for the fifth time in a recent WTO meeting.
The release of the treated water will be continuously monitored by International Atomic Energy Agency staff present at the site. The Task Force will review the discharge plans and associated activities of the Government of Japan and TEPCO against IAEA Safety Standards and will conduct independent source and environmental monitoring to corroborate the data published by the Government of Japan and TEPCO. The goal is to ensure the water disposal is carried out in compliance with the IAEA Safety Standards and, as such, without an adverse impact on human health and the environment.
What about Make America Healthy Again?
On Feb. 13, 2025, President Trump signed an Executive Order establishing the President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission.
Chaired by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the commission is tasked with investigating and addressing the root causes of America’s escalating health crisis, with an initial focus on childhood chronic diseases.
Within 100 days, the commission is to produce an assessment that summarizes what is known and what questions remain regarding the childhood chronic disease crisis, and include international comparisons.
Within 180 days, the commission is to produce a strategy, based on the findings of the assessment, to improve the health of America’s children.
According to the White House’s announcement of the commission, the United States has the highest age-standardized cancer incidence rate across 204 countries, nearly double the next-highest rate.
From 1990 to 2021, the United States saw an 88 percent increase in cancer.
The clock is ticking. And some groups, among them the Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network, a project of the non-profit National Institute for Science, Law and Public Policy, have urged Secretary Kennedy to direct the Health and Human Services Department and its relevant subagencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, to address what it considers the “long-neglected” and growing problem of radioactive contamination of U.S. food and water.
In a March 3 letter to Secretary Kennedy, Kim Roberson, project director of consumer group Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network emphasized that the FDA must address the threat of radiation contamination of U.S. food. And she keyed into Trump’s concern about cancer and childhood health.
“We are greatly alarmed by the decision not only by the Japanese government’s release of 1.3 million tons of radioactive waste, which began in August 2023, but also plans to spread 14 million cubic meters of radioactive waste around Japan as public works projects — including agricultural underlayment,” she said.
And while she said she appreciates Trump’s commitment to improving Americans’ health and advocating for safer, healthier food, she believes that it makes no sense to largely ignore and overlook radioactive contamination of U.S. food and how it may influence the trajectory of cancer and and chronic illness in Americans.
“Impacts on human health from man-made radioactive isotopes ingested in food and water must be part of the review,” she wrote.
She explained that the radiation discussed in the letter is not food irradiation, which destroys microbes without making the food radioactive, but instead is the radioactive contamination of some of the food Americans are eating, which is a growing threat and for which FDA testing have been severely lacking.
Roberson pointed out that while other countries have set far lower standards for disease-causing cesium isotopes in food, the U.S. has weaker guidelines and recommendations, which are unenforceable.
“The health consequences of this are unevenly distributed,” she said. “Children are at far greater risk than adults. And women and girls are at far greater risk than males.”
She also points out that American consumers continue to eat food from Japan that is potentially 12 to 24 times higher in cesium that what Japan’s government allows to be sold or consumed there.
During a July congressional briefing, cesium and tritium were described as two radionuclides of concern linked to cancers and chronic health conditions.
Experts on the panel agreed that radioactive contamination of U.S. food and water is in urgent need of regulation, deserving the same level policymakers and regulators once paid to DDT and mercury.
“Consumers are in the dark, with no labeling and no real information on what to say or buy,” Roberson said in her letter. “Our children are especially at risk.”
In conclusion, Roberson says that the Make America Healthy Again Commission has been directed by President Trump to identify root causes of chronic illnesses and cancers.
“To that end,” she said, the commission should direct the FDA to respond immediately to a Citizen Petition sent to the agency in 2011 — there have been other petitions as well — and report back to the MAHA Commission so radioactive contamination of U.S. food can be included in subsequent strategy per the Feb. 13, 2025, Executive Order.
A few weeks after the filing of the petition, the FDA sent a letter saying it needed more time to respond, but that was 11 years ago, and the response still hasn’t come.
In March this year, Food Safety News sent two emails to the MAHA Commission asking for RFK Jr.’s thoughts on growing radioactive contamination in food. Neither received a reply.
Important to keep in mind is that there are constant releases of radiation from nuclear plants in the U.S., which means that radiation contamination of food and water is an ongoing concern and not just linked to what happened in Japan in 2011. It is also an ongoing concern because of the push to develop new nuclear plants in the United States and other countries.
Glowing in the dark
Congress has oversight power over the FDA, but Roberson said that the FDA has proved resistant to seek congressional guidance on food safety.
To confront and mitigate the growing public health threat of radioactive contamination in food, Roberson said that Congress should pass the Federal Food Administration Act, establish the FFA to focus like a laser beam on food safety, and empanel independent scientists and experts who understand radiation’s environmental and health effects to advise it.
She warns: “Until that happens, we’ll be (glowing) in the dark.”
Recommendations to the FDA in one of the citizen petitions:
● Food commercially available in the U.S. should have no more than 5 Bq/kg of cesium 134/137 contamination. This standard is of practical convenience for current detection equipment. All food should be tested for and labeled with its exact cesium contamination. In the interim at the very least, Japan should export food to the U.S. at the levels they allow their own citizens to consume and no more.
● All tests of contamination should be recorded in a publicly accessible database for common knowledge, with further research into the safety of our food supply. This is necessary not only for the ongoing nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi, but because on average, a major nuclear accident occurs every 10 to 20 years.
● Food that is found to contain cesium should be assigned a tracking number which is then catalogued in a national database which will be publicly accessible for consumers via the internet.
● Monitoring and labeling should be widespread and transparent.
Nearly 1600 people, including scientists, have posted comments to the FDA Citizen Petition. One, a marine biologist very familiar with food testing, pointed out: “It’s vitally important that the FDA analyse Caesium 134 and 137 in food stuffs using ‘long count’ methodology. In my home country (the UK) our nuclear regulators routinely subject samples to a 15 hour count despite scientific reports (published in peer reviewed journals) demonstrating that longer ‘counting times’ provide more precise and accurate results. In my consultancy research with UK Citizens campaign Groups I always require our analysts to use a 3-day count. As a result we find that the data obtained from the UK Nuclear Regulator 15 hour counts always significantly underestimate the radioactivity in their samples. The FDA should take note of this and commit to ensure that they will always use ‘long counting’ gamma analysis for Caesium 134 and 137.”
The 2013 Citizen Petition calls for implementation of improved technology once it becomes available.
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