The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry's demographic statistics show that the number of death caused by cardiac disease increased by 14.6 percent following the Fukushima nuclear disaster. What does the data mean?

Original Text from Ryuichi Akiba's Blog 27.07.2012

http://akiba1.blogspot.jp/2012/07/blog-post_27.html

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry yesterday released its monthly vital statistics of February 2012. http://www.mhlw.go.jp/toukei/saikin/hw/jinkou/geppo/m2012/02.html

It's a report of the investigation on population shift and causes of death of the year before and January and February of this year. We can find the number of death or causes of death before and after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in it.

It can provide valuable figure how much the extremely large amount of fallout released from Fukushima Daiichi damaged public health and life.

The "cause specific death rate" deserves careful attention. See paragraph.2 and 3 of result of summary. The figure might give the creeps to some people.

2

The number of death was up 12.5 percent (=12.695 people) compared to the same month of the year before.(Figure1)

3 The number of death caused by Malignant Neoplasm was up 7.7%(=2.066 people) from the same month of the year before, and the number caused by cardiac disease was up 14.6%(=2.585 people). (Fig.2)

In fact, the data shows that the number of death increased by 12.5% and the number of death caused by cardiac disease increased by 14.6% after the Fukushima nuclear accident.

What does the extreme increase of mortality caused by cardiac disease mean?

Dr.Yury Bandazhevsky of Belarus examined the people exposed to radiation and the people who had died of Chernobyl and clinically identified the association between Cesium radiation and cardiac disease.

Cesium tend to accumulate in muscles of such as heart and can cause acute heart disease, congenital cardiac disorder or child cardiology such as arrhythmic heartbeat or arterial sclerosis. The public health survey in Chernobyl shows that morbidity of cardiac disease increased 20 years after the accident; and this reality supports the findings of his study.

I called the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry to ask about the causes of the increases of mortality and morbidity of cardiac disease after the Fukushima disaster.

The person who is in charge of the monthly statistics said, "The number of death increased because of the earthquake" and "the morbidity of cardiac disease increased as data on the cause of death of Tohoku (North Japan) was gained in clusters because of the confusion after the earthquake ."

It can't be denied the earthquake influenced, however, it's not certain if the specific figure is all caused by that.We can't either determine or deny the morbidity and mortality increased only because of radiation released from Fukushima Daiichi.

We need to pay attention to the next months' vital statistics to figure this out.

Also, the investigation on the radiation exposure, public health damage of the nuclear disaster and the cause of death conducted by the public organizations are important. However, we can't expect much from the ministries of the national government.

What is needed most is clinical or epidemiologic study; statistic or report by independent doctors and researchers. We need many Bandazhevskys to save the children of Japan and all over the world. 

Courtesy : Ryuichi Akiba