My Take | Japanese officials should eat own seafood to ease Fukushima fears
- By subjecting themselves and families to the Erin Brockovich test, they can show to all their faith in the plan to release contaminated waste water
Call it the Erin Brockovich test. Tokyo is due to begin discharging a massive amount of treated waste water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant on Thursday. Japanese officials say it’s all perfectly safe.
So, would you, and would you let your family, eat seafood caught from those places?
In the hit biopic starring Julia Roberts about corporate irresponsibility leading to water contamination for a whole town, Erin the heroic paralegal served water to a team of corporate lawyers during talks. She told them the water was taken from a contaminated source, from which the lawyers claimed was safe to drink. Needless to say, the meeting ended there and then.
With the Japanese seafood, as much as I love it, I would rather not.
The Japanese plan is to release 1.32 million metric tonnes of treated radioactive water – equivalent to 500 Olympic swimming pools – over 30 years.
Japan has assured the world it will have a “negligible” impact on people and the environment. Countries such as Russia, Pacific island nations and China have criticised the plan as irresponsible. Hong Kong will impose an indefinite ban on Japanese seafood imports from 10 nearby prefectures, covering fresh, frozen, chilled, dried and processed seafood, as well as sea salt and seaweed. Tests on other Japanese food imports will also be tested daily.