Once used as an out-of-the-way place to store documents, a small room on the fifth floor of the city office in Chigasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, is now being used to give local residents peace of mind.
Once used as an out-of-the-way place to store documents, a small room on the fifth floor of the city office in Chigasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, is now being used to give local residents peace of mind.
Since March the city has been using radioactive substance detectors in this room to check food, much of it rice or milk, brought in by city residents. As of May 7 the city had performed 61 inspections. The majority of tests have found the food and milk to have radiation levels below the detectable limit (around 10 becquerels per kilogram) and none has exceeded safety levels set by the national government.
More than a year after the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, lingering concerns about food and water safety are seen in the demand for radioactive substance testing being offered through local governments.
These include free inspections of food that residents bring in, as well as checking food items on the shelves of supermarkets and other stores. So far, most inspections have produced a "below detectable level" result.
Fukushima Prefecture, home of the crippled nuclear power plant, has put the biggest emphasis on purchasing radiation detection equipment and offering to inspect food brought in by residents.
"If people can confirm the results of inspections they ask for themselves, then they can feel safe while eating. It'll have a big effect," said an official from the prefecture's consumer affairs division.
According to the prefectural government, inspections will become available in all its municipalities by the end of May. The number of measuring instruments deployed will reach 490, which will inspect items such as homegrown produce for personal consumption, wild vegetables, mushrooms and well water.
In Fukushima city, measuring instruments have been set up in 28 locations in the city, which conduct roughly 500 to 600 inspections a week. When the program began in November, there was a surge of appointments because there were only three devices at one location, leading to three-month waits. Recently, however, people have been able to get inspections the day after applying. According to the Radiation Monitoring Center, which runs the city's program, more residents have been bringing bamboo shoots and wild vegetables since the end of April.
In Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture, inspections began on April 18. Around 500 appointments had been made by May 7, with all slots booked until July 2.
The city says that 60 percent of requests are to test private well water, and none of the results has exceeded the nationally mandated safety level (10 becquerels per liter). The city also says that many city residents, who come to find out whether the water they use on a daily basis is safe, express relief upon hearing the results.
There are also prefectural governments in Niigata, Aichi and elsewhere that have purchased testing equipment and have begun inspections of food brought in by residents.
Some local governments have also been buying and inspecting food products sold in their jurisdictions.
Edogawa Ward in Tokyo began checking food products in March sold within the ward and that were produced in municipalities with shipment restrictions assigned by the national government as well as the prefectures neighboring them, which totals 17 prefectures. Edogawa Ward made 31 inspections in March and planned to check 120 items during the current fiscal year. All the results thus far have been below detectable levels.
A person involved in running the program said, "They also run checks where they produce the food, but the intent is to inspect it near where ward residents consume it."
Gifu Prefecture has also begun inspecting food products distributed within its borders since April 24, checking four samples once every other week.
Until March of next year, Tokyo plans to make 1,000 inspections of domestically produced food items as well as 100 inspections of imported foods from places such as Europe, where the Chernobyl nuclear accident is still affecting products there.
Tokyo checked 60 items in April. Other than 18 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram measured in some cod from Iwate Prefecture, everything has been below detectable levels. The limit for general food is 100 becquerels per kilogram, but a result of 50 becquerels or higher leads to a closer inspection.
Many school meals and their ingredients are being inspected as well. The education ministry's School Health Education Division said as of March there were 190 municipalities checking school meals for radioactive substances.
Support measures by the Consumer Affairs Agency are helping to make these inspections more common. The agency is renting out measuring instruments so that consumers can have their food checked somewhere nearby. By this fall there will be 394 devices deployed to 279 local governments across Japan.
The agency asked local governments to whom it has already lent measuring instruments how they were being used. The breakdown of responses from 136 governments using 185 devices is as follows (with multiple responses from each): 95 governments (126 devices) are inspecting food products brought in by consumers; 14 governments (14 devices) are inspecting food products distributed within their markets; 93 governments (132 devices) are inspecting homegrown produce for personal consumption; and 71 governments (74 devices) are inspecting school meal ingredients.
The response from people around the country seems mixed.
In Ehime Prefecture, which is inspecting food items brought in by residents, the government has made seven checks as of May 7. The division that handles pharmaceutical and sanitation affairs, and which runs the program, explained why there have been so few requests: "There was a lot of demand when beef was going around that came from cows that had eaten contaminated rice straw. But most of the food products distributed in the prefecture have always come from western Japan."
Chigasaki also expected a flood of requests before starting its program, so the city set up a lottery system for making appointments. But officials also began measuring the ingredients of school meals and other items due to an excess of slots.
"Food here may seem safer now simply because we can perform inspections in the city," said a chief of the city resident consultation division.
A lessening of demand is also being seen at privately run measuring stations. Bekumiru, a store that opened its first branch in Kashiwa and allows shoppers to measure food and other items for radioactive substances, opened its second location in Tokyo's Ueno district in December. However, this second store closed on April 26 because there were few shoppers.
At first there were 10 to 20 shoppers a day, but there were some days since the start of the year with no customers.
"We had heard from people in Tokyo that they wanted our store, but there wasn't as much demand as we thought," a store employee said. "The rising number of municipalities inspecting things that people bring in also might have had an effect."