A Nuclear Safety Commission subcommittee decided Monday how they would study people who came within 350 meters of the site of the Sept. 30 nuclear criticality accident in Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture.
According to basic guidelines drawn up at a meeting of the commission's panel on health management, the study will cover those who lived, worked or passed through the contaminated area and detail their movements between 10 a.m. Sept. 30 and 7 a.m. the following morning.
On Sunday, an associate professor at a medical school in Kawasaki said that eight people among 150 the Ibaraki Prefectural Government asked him to inspect had higher-than-average amounts of a substance that indicates DNA damage occurred. All of the people tested were within 350 meters of JCO Co., the uranium-processing plant where the accident took place, in that time frame. The substance was detected by urine tests.
The study will attempt to record the times when people were indoors or outdoors and the material makeup of the buildings they were in. The people will also be asked whether windows facing the uranium processing plant were open.
The probe will also check to see whether these people worked at nuclear facilities in the past and will assess their medical history. However, whether the people found affected so far will be told of their maladies remains unclear as the prefectural government has not yet informed the eight people, or the municipal office of Tokai, of its findings.