The education ministry on Nov. 30 set its first radiation safety standards for lunches provided at elementary and junior high schools, which will apply to 17 prefectures in eastern Japan.
The education ministry on Nov. 30 set its first radiation safety standards for lunches provided at elementary and junior high schools, which will apply to 17 prefectures in eastern Japan.The standard is 40 becquerels or less per kilogram for radioactive substances contained in the lunches, and will essentially be used as a regulation threshold. In its notification, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology also instructed the prefectures to buy radiation detectors with a minimum detection limit of 40 becquerels or less per kilogram, and to publicize the results of their inspections. Purchases of five detectors per prefecture will be eligible for central government subsidies. The ministry is also envisaging item-by-item inspections of food ingredients in the lunches before they are cooked.The tolerable level for school lunches is much stricter than the provisional standards of 200 becquerels per kilogram for drinking water, milk and dairy products, and 500 becquerels per kilogram for vegetables, meat, fish and grains."We adopted one-fifth the figure of the stricter standard (of 200 becquerels) to be on the safe side," an education ministry official said.The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare is considering reducing the maximum tolerable levels of internal radiation from cesium in food from the current 5 millisieverts per year to 1 millisievert per year. The education ministry decided on its level for school lunches in light of the expected revision of the health ministry's standards.The ministry's notification was sent to all six prefectures in the Tohoku region, all 10 prefectures in the Kanto Koshinetsu region, and Shizuoka Prefecture. The ministry will let prefectural and municipal governments decide which ingredients should be inspected and what measures should be taken in response to specific levels of radioactive content.The education ministry, however, provided instructions on how schools should respond when radioactivity exceeds 40 becquerels per kilogram in the lunches. If only one ingredient is found above that level, the school lunches should be provided after that item is removed, according to the ministry.But if the level exceeds the standard in more than one ingredient, making it difficult to complete the lunches with the remaining ingredients, only bread and milk should be provided to the children, the ministry said.