"Fukushima Teacher Muzzled Over Radiation"

The Japan Times via Bloomberg:"Fukushima Teacher Muzzled Over Radiation":

Fukushima teacher muzzled over radiation

By TAKAHIKO HYUGA
Bloomberg

As temperatures soared above 37 degrees on a recent July morning, schoolchildren in Fukushima Prefecture were taking off their masks and running around playgrounds in T-shirts, exposing themselves to a similar amount of annual radiation as a nuclear power plant worker.

Toshinori Shishido, a Japanese literature teacher of 25 years, warned his students two months ago to wear surgical masks and keep their skin covered with long-sleeved shirts. His advice went unheeded, not because of the weather but because his school told him not to alarm students. Shishido quit last week.

"I want to get away from this situation where I'm not even allowed to alert children about radiation exposure," said Shishido, 48, who taught at Fukushima Nishi High School. "Now I'm free to talk about the risks."

After the March 11 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Tohoku region, the central government evacuated as many as 470,000 residents, including 160,000 because of radiation risks from the wrecked Fukushima No. 1 power plant. More than 2 million people, including 271,000 children, remain in Fukushima, the third-biggest prefecture by size...

Radiation can damage human cells and DNA, with prolonged exposure causing leukemia and other forms of cancer, according to the World Nuclear Association. Children are more susceptible as their cells grow at a faster rate...

Shishido will leave Fukushima for Sapporo on Aug. 8 to join his wife and two children, aged 13 and 10, he said. The teacher aims to create a network there to help the 3,000 evacuees from Fukushima find jobs.

Shishido said he was instructed by school officials not to tell his students that they should wear masks or about how radiation would affect their health. He deleted some comments from his blog after receiving those orders in May.

"I saw little boys playing baseball in a cloud of dust, and I wondered who can protect their future," said Kanako Nishikata, a 33-year-old housewife with a son, aged 11, and daughter, aged 8. "It's shocking to learn a teacher is quitting because he can't protect the students."

A group of parents and children from Fukushima plan to visit education minister Yoshiaki Takaki on Aug. 17 to ask him to evacuate children from the prefecture, she said.

Fukushima Nishi High, which has 873 students, had readings of 0.07 microsieverts per hour in the school building and 1.5 microsieverts per hour in the playground on July 14, still within the safety limits set by the prefecture and central government, said Furukawa, the assistant principal.

The school continues to hold gym classes and sports club activities outside, he said.

"I don't think the children are safe either, and I know the radiation level is still high," Furukawa said. "These days, they are wearing short sleeves and no masks."

An official at the Fukushima prefectural board of education who didn't want to be identified said he was surprised that Fukushima Nishi High clamped down on Shishido's views. The board has sent counselors to the 301 schools it oversees to ensure that children are not suffering mental problems, the official said. The board also asks students and teachers to wash their hands and gargle after playing outside, the official said.

About a fifth of the 1,600 schools in Fukushima are exposed to at least 20 millisieverts of radiation a year, the Network to Protect Fukushima Children from Radiation said, citing the most recent government readings in April. That's the limit for an atomic plant worker set by the International Commission on Radiological Protection.

More than three-quarters of the schools receive radiation readings of 0.6 microsievert per hour, said the network, a group comprising 700 parents. That's 10 times more than the readings in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo, on average...

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