SAPPORO--A 57-year-old man is suing Tokyo Electric Power Co. and a contractor on grounds he developed multiple cancers from radiation exposure while performing cleanup work around the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
SAPPORO--A 57-year-old man is suing Tokyo Electric Power Co. and a contractor on grounds he developed multiple cancers from radiation exposure while performing cleanup work around the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
The lawsuit filed in the Sapporo District Court on Sept. 1 is seeking 65 million yen ($541,666) in damages.
According to the man's lawyers, it is the nation’s first lawsuit to assert a correlation between the onset of cancer and radiation exposure stemming from work to contain the nuclear crisis that unfolded at the plant in March 2011 after the earthquake and tsunami disaster.
The lawsuit also names construction company Taisei Corp., which was contracted by the utility to help with the cleanup in which the plaintiff was involved, as well as other parties.
The man was involved in removing debris near the plant for about four months from July 2011, according to court documents.
In addition to directing heavy machinery via remote control, he operated heavy equipment and removed debris by hand at a site with high radiation readings.
He was diagnosed with bladder cancer in June 2012, stomach cancer in March 2013 and colon cancer in May of that year.
Records show that the man was exposed to 56.41 millisieverts of radiation during the four months he worked around the plant.
But the plaintiff argued that the total must have exceeded 100 millisieverts because he occasionally worked without a dosimeter to ensure that his radiation readings remained below the legal limit.
A dose of 100 millisieverts over a year is considered enough to raise the risk of cancer.
“We will respond to this suit in a sincere manner after we get more details about his claim,” a TEPCO representative said.
Taisei Corp. said it will consider a response after receiving the court documents.