TOKYO, Nov. 2 — Kyodo has confirmed that 40 millisieverts (40,000 microsieverts) per hour — not 40 microsieverts per hour as reported by NHK — was detected at the supermarket in Setagaya, Tokyo.
Unfortunately, Kyodo’s headline for this article — which is the only thing that many people read — proclaims, “Radiation near Tokyo supermarketunrelated to Fukushima crisis”. The first sentence of the report states the radiation “appears” to be unrelated. Further down it says, “The source of the radiation has not been determined.”
In fact, the only evidence cited in Kyodo’s report that ties this radiation to radium is, “Lead and bismuth, released when radium-226 decays, were detected after workers dug into the ground, [science ministry officials] said.”
The officials also said a person continually exposed to this level of radiation for just two and a half hours would increase their risk of dying from cancer by .5 percent.
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