Concerned about children and their exposure to radiation, the health ministry is considering significantly lowering the safety standard levels for infant food and milk to half the level for food, while setting the benchmark for drinking water in line with the World Health Organization.
Concerned about children and their exposure to radiation, the health ministry is considering significantly lowering the safety standard levels for infant food and milk to half the level for food, while setting the benchmark for drinking water in line with the World Health Organization.
The ministry prepared a draft guideline for radiation contained in food that sets new safety standards for both infant food and milk at 50 becquerels per kilogram, with those for drinking water at 10 becquerels and general food at 100 becquerels, sources said.
The ministry intends for the new standards to take effect in April.
The new guidelines will be proposed at a meeting of the ministry's Pharmaceutical Affairs and Food Sanitation Council on Dec. 22. The proposed standards are much stricter than the provisional standards currently in use: for drinking water, the new benchmark is one-20th of the existing standard; for milk, one-fourth of the standards; and for general food, one-fifth of the levels.
The ministry has also dropped the acceptable levels of exposure to radioactive cesium through ingesting food to 1 millisievert a year, one-fifth of the 5 millisieverts set by the provisional standards.
In addition, by looking at average amounts of ingested general food--including vegetables, grains, meats and fish--and the effects of contained radiation on health by age group and gender, health authorities calculated acceptable concentrations of radioactive substances contained in such food.
Of the calculated concentration levels, the lowest is 120 becquerels per kilogram, but the ministry, trying to ensure standards are safe, set the benchmark figure for general food at 100 becquerels.
Kunikazu Noguchi, a lecturer at the isotope research center in the School of Dentistry, Nihon University, praised the ministry for setting separate safety standards for infants, although he feels the levels should be lower.
"Since levels of exposure to radiation should be reduced to as low as possible from the perspective of radiation protection, I have to say this new standard leaves much to be desired," he said.
"To gain trust in the standards from the public, the government must establish a system that prevents any food and water with radiation levels above safety standards from slipping into the market, if it persists in trying to impose those levels of safety standards," Noguchi warned.