Residents outside evacuation zone around Fukushima Daiichi receiving over 2 rem per year radiation doses!

The Asahi Shimbun has reported that "A report released June 3 by the science ministry said annual accumulated radiation levels are estimated at 20.1, 20.8, 23.8 millisieverts in the Ishida and Kamioguni areas of the Ryozen-machi district in Date city, and the Ohara area of the Hara-machi district of Minami-Soma, respectively...These areas lie beyond the planned evacuation zone, which is just outside the off-limits area within a 20-kilometer radius of the plant." This converts to 2.01, 2.08, and 2.38 rems per year -- more than German nuclear power plant workers are allowed to receive! Despite this, the paper reports "Government officials in charge of nuclear disaster control measures tried to reassure the residents by telling them that the standard of 20 millisieverts is among the lowest in the world." This is blatantly false -- members of the public in the U.S., for example, are allowed only 100 millirem per year doses of radioactivity from the uranium fuel chain, including emissions from nuclear power plants, in a year's time. When the Japanese federal Ministry of Education try to raise the permissible dose for schoolchildren playing on contaminated schoolyards from 100 mrem/yr to 2 rem/yr, large-scale parent protests forced the federal government to reverse the decision and beginning "cleaning up" the contaminated playgrounds. Where the contaminated topsoil will be buried, or how the radioactivity will be stopped from leaking into groundwater, has not been reported. The article also reports that "Shoji Nishida, the mayor of Date, also said the 20-millisievert level does not pose an immediate danger." No immediate danger was a pat phrase of false assurance uttered countless times by Japanese nuclear officials in the first weeks of the catastrophe. "No immediate danger" was repeated so often after the Three Mile Island meltdown by nuclear officials that Rosalie Bertell made it the title of her book about radioactivity's hazards -- only she added a question mark! The phrase remains silent about latent health impacts -- such as childhood leukemia, which has a latency period of a few years.