About 300,000 children and pregnant women in Fukushima Prefecture will get dosimeters to monitor their exposure to radiation spewed from the hobbled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
About 300,000 children and pregnant women in Fukushima Prefecture will get dosimeters to monitor their exposure to radiation spewed from the hobbled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
The Fukushima prefectural government will give each municipality up to 15,000 yen ($186) per dosimeter for those eligible, according to an extra budget proposal released June 24.
The fluoroglass dosimeters will be given to all 280,000 children in the prefecture aged 14 or younger, including children who have been evacuated out of the prefecture.
About 20,000 pregnant women will also get the meters, the prefectural government said.
It will install 10 dosimeters in each of the 500 elementary school zones in the prefecture to gauge radiation levels inside school buildings, on pupils' routes to schools, in local parks and other locations.
Five "whole-body counters," to measure children's internal exposure to radiation, will also be set up.
The prefecture also said it would add 2,800 people in Namie, Iitate and Kawamata to a list of residents required to undergo internal radiation exposure examinations. Radiation levels in those municipalities are higher than in other communities outside the 20-kilometer exclusion zone.
The internal exposure checks will be conducted under the supervision of the government-affiliated Japan Atomic Energy Agency in Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture.
Meanwhile, small amounts of cesium were detected in all of the urine samples taken from 15 residents in Iitate and Kawamata, both about 35 km from the plant. Small amounts of iodine were found in the urine of six people.
Nanao Kamada, professor emeritus of radiation biology at Hiroshima University who led the study, said, "There should not be health concerns as long as they don't take contaminated foods and drinks."
Kamada took urine samples from 10 males and five females, aged 4 through 77, on May 5 and in late May. On both dates, cesium was detected in all of the samples. Iodine was found in six people's urine on May 5, but was not found in late May.
The estimated cumulative exposure to radiation for the person who had the largest trace of cesium was 0.085 millisieverts if the substance stayed inside the body for 50 years.