Opposition parties are urging that food items from Japan be tested for strontium-90 once the government’s controversial decision to lift a ban on food items from areas in Japan affected by the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 takes effect.
New Power Party chairperson and lawmaker Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華) said the government only plans to test for three radioactive substances — iodine 137, cesium 134 and cesium 137 — once the ban is lifted, but strontium-90, a potential carcinogen, has been left out.
The party was not opposed to the new policy, Chen said, but it insisted that the necessary safeguards were in place and public hearings were held to answer public doubts, including not accounting for strontium-90.
In a written opinion contributed to the press conference, Tsai Chih-hung (蔡志宏), the former director of the Changhua Medical Alliance for Public Affairs, said strontium-90, unlike cesium-137, is not easily flushed from the body.
Instead, like calcium, it is incorporated into bones, and poses a long-term risk of cancers of the bone and bone marrow, Tsai said in also pushing for strontium-90 testing on food imports from the affected areas.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) official Cheng Wei-chih (鄭維智) seemed to dismiss the NPP’s concerns later Thursday, however, saying that testing for I-131, Cs-134 and Cs-137 was adequate to safeguard food safety.
Many countries, including Taiwan, banned imports of food and agricultural items from five prefectures in Japan — Fukushima, Gunma, Chiba, Ibaraki, and Tochigi — soon after the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in March 2011 following a massive earthquake and tsunami.
Those bans have been partially or fully lifted in recent years, though with stringent testing for the three main radionuclides released during the meltdown (I-131, Cs-134, and Cs-137).
The United States Food and Drug Administration said in an update on its response to the nuclear disaster in September 2021 that it also monitors other factors, including strontium-90, ruthenium-103 and ruthenium-106, as needed, indicating that strontium-90 could still be of concern.
The main opposition Kuomintang (KMT), meanwhile, held a seminar Thursday to look at the risks and hazards of lifting the ban, and the strontium-90 issue was one of the issues on the agenda, with many in attendance calling for stricter controls at the products’ sources.
Former Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), who has a Ph.D. in food science and technology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, also raised concerns about the danger of strontium-90.
He said it was particularly common in dairy products, and because of its 30-year half-life, had implications for children.
“If we ingest strontium-90, it stays in our bodies a long time. In a 10-year-old, it will still carry about 25 percent of its original danger when the child reaches 70-80 years old,” Hau said.
Chiou Shu-ti (邱淑媞), the former head of the Health Promotion Administration, expressed concern that long-term exposure to foods with strontium-90 and cesium-137 could created a greater risk of cancer than smoking.
She contended that large amounts of strontium-90 were released in the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown, and high strontium-90 residues remain present in seafood from the area.
Taiwan will have to pay a cost to prevent foods with radioactive substances from entering, putting pressure on various resources, including testing labs, without necessarily getting anything in return, she argued.
She and Hau both said Taiwan’s capacity to test for strontium-90 was limited because most of its equipment is geared to detecting gamma rays emitted by iodine and cesium rather than the beta rays emitted by strontium.
The Atomic Energy Council later responded that between its own facilities and those of two other groups, Taiwan could conduct 54 strontium tests per month.
Hau, who led a referendum initiative in November 2018 in which voters across Taiwan opposed lifting the ban by a 78-22 percent margin, and others said strict controls would be necessary once the lifting of the ban takes effect.
The best way to control radionuclides in foods from Japan, he said, would simply be to not let items from the nuclear disaster-affected areas in.
Because that may no longer be possible, however, Hau urged that the flow of such products be carefully managed from the source and that inspections be intensified to prevent any items containing radioactive substances from reaching Taiwanese consumers.
He also suggested that local governments provide clear labels to identify food processors, restaurants and hotels that are free of food from the five prefectures.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel