35% Spike in Infant Mortality in US Northwest Cities Since Fukushima Meltdown

http://www.counterpunch.org/sherman06102011.html

excerpt:

(NOTE: Megano is a physician and epidemiologist)

Is the Dramatic Increase in Baby Deaths in the US a Result of Fukushima Fallout?

By JANETTE D. SHERMAN, MD
and JOSEPH MANGANO

U.S. babies are dying at an increased rate. While the United States spends billions on medical care, as of 2006, the US ranked 28th in the world in infant mortality, more than twice that of the lowest ranked countries. (DHHS, CDC, National Center for Health Statistics. Health United States 2010, Table 20, p. 131, February 2011.)

The recent CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report indicates that eight cities in the northwest U.S. (Boise ID, Seattle WA, Portland OR, plus the northern California cities of Santa Cruz, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and Berkeley) reported the following data on deaths among those younger than one year of age:

4 weeks ending March 19, 2011 - 37 deaths (avg. 9.25 per week)
10 weeks ending May 28, 2011 - 125 deaths (avg.12.50 per week)

This amounts to an increase of 35% (the total for the entire U.S. rose about 2.3%), and is statistically significant. Of further significance is that those dates include the four weeks before and the ten weeks after the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster. In 2001 the infant mortality was 6.834 per 1000 live births, increasing to 6.845 in 2007. All years from 2002 to 2007 were higher than the 2001 rate.

Spewing from the Fukushima reactor are radioactive isotopes including those of iodine (I-131), strontium (Sr-90) and cesium (Cs-134 and Cs-137) all of which are taken up in food and water. Iodine is concentrated in the thyroid, Sr-90 in bones and teeth and Cs-134 and Cs-137 in soft tissues, including the heart. The unborn and babies are more vulnerable because the cells are rapidly dividing and the delivered dose is proportionally larger than that delivered to an adult.

Data from Chernobyl, which exploded 25 years ago, clearly shows increased numbers of sick and weak newborns and increased numbers of deaths in the unborn and newborns, especially soon after the meltdown. These occurred in Europe as well as the former Soviet Union. Similar findings are also seen in wildlife living in areas with increased radioactive fallout levels.
(Chernobyl – Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, Alexeiy V. Yablokov, Vasily B. Nesterenko, and Alexey V. Nesterenko. Consulting Editor: Janette D. Sherman-Nevinger. New York Academy of Sciences, 2009.)

http://janettesherman.com/

http://www.radiation.org/

the about page:

Mission

The Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP) is a nonprofit educational and scientific organization, established by scientists and physicians dedicated to understanding the relationships between low-level, nuclear radiation and public health.

RPHP's mission includes:

* Research: Studying the links between low-level radiation and world-wide increases in diseases, especially cancer and those affecting the newborn and children and to become the leading, world-wide source of information on radiation and public health issues.

* Education: Publishing the results of research dealing with the impact of low-level radiation on public health and to disseminate this information to the public, media, policy makers and the scientific community.

* Public awareness: Promoting public awareness and responsible public policy related to radiation and public health, in the areas of freedom of information...objective medical and scientific investigation... institutional accountability...independent oversight...and responsible public health and environmental policy.

History and Accomplishments of the Radiation and Public Health Project

RPHP was established as a non-profit 501 (c)(3) organization in 1995, after many years of work by its founders--Jay Gould and Ernest Sternglass--as part of other nonprofit environmental and public policy organizations.

Given RPHP's threefold mission in the areas of research, education and public awareness, the history of RPHP can best be traced through its books and articles on radiation and nuclear issues--by Jay Gould, Ernest Sternglass, Joseph Mangano, Bill McDonnell, Janette Sherman and Jerry Brown.

During the first half century of the Nuclear Age a growing body of medical and scientific evidence has emerged to demonstrate a probable causal link between low-level internal radiation from the ingestion of man-made fission products and world-wide increases in immune deficiency diseases, especially cancer and those affecting the newborn. RPHP has assembled much of the epidemiological evidence documenting these links.

Five books published by RPHP research associates summarize hundreds of articles in peer-reviewed journals dealing with these impacts of ingested, low-level fission products--products which did not exist in nature prior to the Nuclear Age. In addition to the effects upon the immune response of all age groups, the very young have been especially affected. RPHP has repeatedly pointed out the radiation-induced damage apparent in official vital statistics, tracing changes in infant mortality rates and underweight live births in the postwar period, especially during the aboveground nuclear test years of the 1950s and the 1960s.

RPHP has also been able to track the radiation-induced damage done to the hormonal and immune systems of the 80 million baby boomers born between 1945 and 1965 in each of the post war decades, revealing the various epidemiological anomalies: In the 1950s, children born after the enormous initial exposure to nuclear fission products began to experience epidemic increases in childhood cancer in the ages 5 to 9.

In USA Newborn Deterioration in the Nuclear Age: 1945-1965 , RPHP found

...a cumulated excess of about 1 million infant deaths over the 50 year postwar period, attributable to exposure to all post-1945 releases of chemical and radioactive pollutants.

In 1963, when children born in the traumatic initial year of 1945 reached the age of 18, there began a mysterious 20-year decline in Scholastic Aptitude Scores (SAT), which only improved when the tests were taken by those born after the cessation of aboveground superpower nuclear bomb tests, which had exploded the equivalent of 40,000 Hiroshima bombs between 1945 and 1963.

With the onset of another wave of fallout in the form of accidental and 'normal' releases of low-level radiation from civilian nuclear power reactors, rapidly coming on line in the 1970s, RPHP found a linkage to the emergence of immune deficiency diseases in the 1980s, including AIDS, as well as early breast cancer (for women baby boomers reaching age 35).

Concerning America's cancer epidemic, RPHP has analyzed official National Cancer Institute, age-adjusted, breast and prostate cancer mortality rates, available since 1950 for every county in the United States, and demonstrated highly significant correlations between high cancer death rates and proximity to nuclear reactors.

In The Enemy Within: The High Cost of Living Near Nuclear Reactors, RPHP showed that of the over 3,000 counties in the United States, women living in about 1,300 nuclear counties (located within 10 0 miles of a reactor) are at the greatest risk of dying of breast cancer.

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I'd sure like to compare a nine-month period from the start of Fukushima to a similar period from the same area a year earlier. I think that would be statistically more significant.

Studying Seattle Boise and Portland makes sense, these are in the path of the airstream that would carry radioactive materials.

But why throw in Sacramento, for example?

Without seeing more data, without knowing these writers and scientists, I have to be a bit skeptical.

The recent CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report indicates that eight cities in the northwest U.S. (Boise ID, Seattle WA, Portland OR, plus the northern California cities of Santa Cruz, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and Berkeley) reported the following data on deaths among those younger than one year of age:

4 weeks ending March 19, 2011 - 37 deaths (avg. 9.25 per week)
10 weeks ending May 28, 2011 - 125 deaths (avg.12.50 per week)

This amounts to an increase of 35% (the total for the entire U.S. rose about 2.3%), and is statistically significant. Of further significance is that those dates include the four weeks before and the ten weeks after the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster. In 2001 the infant mortality was 6.834 per 1000 live births, increasing to 6.845 in 2007. All years from 2002 to 2007 were higher than the 2001 rate.

:shrug:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hcBGSr9QGk

UC Dr. de Sante saw this pattern with fallout, recommend watching this about his work

It's all about the vulnerable.

The pre/post fukushima data set makes sense on its face. Since its a bit odd, the truncated period before Fukushima should be explained, but off the top of my I can think of a couple of possible and valid reasons that might have made limiting the data set to 4 weeks the right thing to do.

I'd like a more complete discussion of the reasoning but I'd not dismiss the evidence offered based on what I've seen so far.

couldn't have any thing to do with this, now could it? Naa, let's blame the radioactivity half a world away. After all that same radioactivity cause tornadoes, right? I read that right here on DU, so it's gotta be true.
Joplin is proof it's tornadoes. It looks like a bomb hit it, so it must be the radioactivity. See, proof. :eyes:

…to the cancer epidemic that they know will result from Fukushima.

They don't want all those poor, sick people clogging up "their" hospitals,
and they surely don't want to pay for it.

It reminds of my mom getting hysterical because I was born premature 2 days after Chernobyl went BOOM.

Especially since it actually makes the opposite point...