Are there any solutions for these extremely important public health questions? Even if the chances of these disasters are extremely low, are the severe health risks high enough to question the shut down of all nuclear power plants? How prepared is the United States to deal with a problem like this? If we have no preventative plan in place, how can any other public health plans be made?
Monday, March 28, 2011
A Public Health Nightmare: The Nuclear Disaster in Japan
Helen Caldicott, a strong nuclear power opponent, the head of the Helen Caldicott Foundation for a Nuclear-Free Planet and a leading pediatrician on faculty at Harvard Medical School, was interviewed by CNN about the health risks of the nuclear situation in Japan. She describes that there is no way to estimate risk with a nuclear disaster of this type. Public Health officials will have a very hard time determining who is being affected by this radiation. While studying risk in class, we talked about the ratio of those infected over all of those at risk. If no denominator can be determined, the best plan of action is extremely unclear. While public health officials are used to fairly inaccurate data, the difficulties of measuring radiation and the lack of short term effects makes this case especially difficult. Once a person is exposed to radiation in food, water, or air, there are very few resources available to help them. It is nearly impossible to provide enough clean water to support a large population whose drinking water has been poisoned and nothing can be done to prevent people from breathing in toxic air particles. These barriers severely limit primary and secondary levels of care in public health. The only option left is treatment after the damage has already been done. It is impossible to stop this disaster from happening, and its effects cannot really be slowed. To make matters more complicated, the effects of radiation are extremely long lasting. The rate of disease in this affected area will be extremely high for a long time to come.
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This seems to be a very complicated situation, not only for Japan in the coming months, years and possibly decades, but also for the entire future of nuclear power worldwide. As Pietro mentioned, one of the things that seems to be most concerning is the timeline of disease onset. The full impact of this nuclear disaster will not be known for years and years and it seems to me as though some of the disease will also be hard to track back to its root cause--probably part of why we have not been able to predict the effects of this event with any specificity.
ReplyDeleteI definitely understand the drive toward questioning our global use of nuclear power, but I wonder which power sources would take up the slack if we do shift away from nuclear power. In my opinion, a big concern here would be sustainability. Although some power sources may be seem better for the short term, the environmental impacts must be considered in order to avoid immense consequences later on. As usual, there are many questions and hardly any answers. Does anyone have an opinion on what our best way forward would be concerning the bulk of our power sources?