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Outside In | Fukushima waste water hysteria distracts from real threats to Pacific Ocean’s health
- The shameless scaremongering and geopolitical point-scoring over the release of Fukushima waste water betray a lack of rationality
- People around the Pacific should be concerned about reducing ocean pollution, but the tritium from Fukushima is far from the most pressing issue
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People living around the Pacific Ocean have good reason to be alarmed about the threats to everyone’s health from marine water pollution, but tritium and water being released into the ocean from the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan is not among them.
Putting aside some shameless scaremongering, driven by geopolitical arm-wrestling with Japan, the alarmist contagion that has surged across South Korea, mainland China and even Hong Kong over the release of Fukushima water illustrates one thing more than anything: our generally appalling ability to rationally evaluate the environmental risks our communities face.
At best, this ignorance leaves us unfocused on the true dangers to our health. At worst, it results in the misdirection of billions of dollars to problems that involve negligible or non-existent risk, at the expense of funds being directed to tackle major environmental challenges that threaten our health and livelihoods worldwide.
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It is worth remembering that up until the 1975 London Convention, our oceans were regarded as dumping grounds. Recall the 2018 Ocean Pollution Guide by the research group IPEN: “The notion of a vast ocean with endless food supplies and a limitless capacity to absorb and ‘dilute’ pollution is a deeply embedded cultural myth in industrialised cultures.”
A National Geographic study published in 2019 noted that up to 1972, oceans were quite literally garbage dumps: “Millions of tons of heavy metals and chemical contaminants, along with thousands of containers of radioactive waste, were purposely thrown into the ocean.”
Confirming such findings, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently reported that around 80 per cent of the pollution found in the ocean comes from the land – from industry, transport, agriculture and consumer waste, flushed into rivers and out to sea.
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