Several new studies report that the impact to the US West Coast from Fukushima may be larger than anticipated. Radiation from the March 11, 2011 power plant meltdown contaminated the entire northern hemisphere within days, especially the West Coast of the United States. US environmental monitoring agencies have so far declined comment on what, if any, impact this could have on the health of the population along the coast.

On the Bellona website, Charles Digges quotes a new scientific paper as stating that its research "clearly demonstrates how little dissipation [of radionuclides] occurred [between March 12 and 16] due to the nature of the rapid global air circulation system."
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The radiation in the air due to the Fukushima meltdown does not seem to have been high enough to effect human beings. But there is one species it has devastated: butterflies. Exposure to radioactive material released into the environment has caused mutations in butterflies found in Japan.

Two workers at the reactor were killed by the 50-foot-high tsunami, but the fear that the victims of the radiation that spewed from it would number in the thousands never materialized. In fact, the "hot spots" in Japan showed radiation at the level of .1 rem, a number that’s small compared with the radiation that people in Denver live with every day (a rem is the unit of measurement used to gauge radiation damage to human tissue).
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A Japanese Parliament report says that the government’s claims about Fukushima are a complete lie. A Japanese government inquiry has come to the conclusion that the nuclear accident at Fukushima was a preventable disaster rooted in government-industry collusion and the worst conformist conventions of Japanese culture. But if Fukushima radiation is heading for the West Coast of the US, that won’t be much comfort to us.
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The operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant has been dumping almost a thousand tons per DAY of radioactive water into the Pacific ocean. Will the Pacific ocean dilute this enough so that it’s harmless once it reaches our shores? And what about the debris that it’s bringing along with it?
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