The preliminary statement just released by UNSCEAR about health risks from the Fukushima disaster was immediately used by the Japanese press to reassure readers that there has been “no rise in cancer” from radiation exposure. More than anything, however, the text highlights what happens when the specialized word choice of scientists meets the everyday language of the public. The statement says that “it is unlikely to be able to attribute any health effects in the future” to radiation, that without quick evacuations “we might have seen the cancer rates rising” over the next decades, that no deaths or acute effects “have been observed ” among workers, and that given the small number of highly exposed workers “it is unlikely that excess cases of thyroid cancer due to radiation exposure would be detectable” (emphasis mine). Nowhere does the statement say that deleterious health effects will not be caused by radiation exposure from the meltdowns.
The issue of causation in low-dose radiation exposure–or low, long-term exposure to many other environmental biohazards, for that matter–goes to the heart of a perennial misconception. Here is what UNSCEAR says about the matter in its latest full report on the effects of atomic radiation (2010):
“Because the diseases of interest can be relatively common and their incidence may be influenced by factors other than radiation exposure, epidemiological observations are frequently unable to reveal clear evidence of radiation-associated increased incidence at low doses. For this reason, the Committee has sought to make full use of recent advances in knowledge from experimental studies and in the understanding of the mechanistic basis for human disease. In developing health risk estimates, the Committee considers populations, not individuals.”
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In other words, we know that cancers due to exposure will happen, but we won’t be able to pinpoint them. Industry lobbyists and flacks have been playing fast-and-loose with this subject for generations, at least since the sordid heyday of the Tobacco Institute.
There is broad consensus among the world’s major scientific organizations that risk rises from zero as the dose rises from zero, and that the risk is cumulative. Someday, somewhere, someone will get cancer because of Fukushima fallout.