In the Oct. 31 article "Fallout projection irks rice region, new targets," Ayako Mie writes, "Exposure to 100 millisieverts would raise the lifetime risk of dying of cancer by 0.5 percent."
What kind of information is this? Apart from the fact that it is absolutely meaningless to state the consequences of radioactive exposure without mentioning the time during which it occurs, this sentence merely downplays the risks of radioactivity.
Read this carefully: Exposure to 100 millisieverts per hour means that within 70 hours everybody is dead.
If you mean 100 mSv per year, this means that the radiation is 200 times higher than the natural radiation in Japan, and 100 times higher than the amount acceptable for places where people live, according to the old law, which was weakened after the Fukushima crisis, and still five times higher than the amount accepted by the new law. This means that nobody can live securely in a place like that, as far as the government's opinion is concerned.
The biggest problem, however, is not the external radiation but the fact that radioactive substances would be in the food and water of the region, and thus cause wide-ranging damage to the human body, especially to unborn babies.
Please inform yourself before writing harmful nonsense.
The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.