Excessive Radiation Fears Caused Deaths of Elderly Hospital Patients in Fukushima?

The Yomiuri has reported a very sad episode that occurred back in March. It seems that authorities overreacted to the potential danger of radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and ordered a rushed evacuation of elderly people housed at hospitals and nursing homes in the area. The physical condition of many of the patients was not properly considered, and the method of evacuation appears to have caused some deaths:

The prefectural government asked the Self-Defense Forces to transfer the patients to the Soso Public Health and Welfare Office, about 25 kilometers north of the power plant, because it was designated as a radiation screening site.

“We believed they had to undergo radiation screenings first to be accepted at evacuation centers,” a prefectural government public health official said.

However, Prof. Yoshio Hosoi of Hiroshima University–an emergency radiation medicine expert who was dispatched to the prefecture in response to the accident–could not help wondering if it was necessary for these patients to undergo the screenings. The professor believed they had probably not been exposed to excessive radiation because they remained indoors after the accident.

In fact, screenings for the 840 patients found none of them had been exposed to a level of radiation high enough for them to require decontamination treatment.

Among them were 132 patients and residents from Futaba Hospital and the Deauville Futaba home for the elderly, both of which were in Okumamachi. After arriving at the welfare office and undergoing radiation screening, they were then moved to Iwaki, in the southern part of the prefecture, via Fukushima city and Koriyama.

They traveled about 200 kilometers during the 12-hour journey before arriving at Iwaki-Koyo High School. Three patients died in transit, while an another 11 passed away hours after arriving at the school.

“The public had excessive radiation exposure fears,” Hosoi said as to why authorities put more focus on radiation screenings rather than the swift transfer of the patients.

At least 77 elderly people have died since undergoing evacuation after the March 11th disaster. Many of the deaths can be linked the stress of relocation.

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Level3

The fallback of all the radiation scare alarmists (and many other health/alternative medicine-related activism of ill-informed “concerned citizens”) is often to say,

“What’s the harm?”

Thinking that nobody can be too careful, that there is no cost, no loss, no harm from their acitivsm, disinformation, and calls for people to basically ignore reason and engage in behaviour based on fear, based on hunches, based on panic,etc.

But as we see here, there IS a cost. In the case of Fukushima, the costs of radiation panic have included: panic buying, people needlessly abandoning their jobs/lives to flee the country, needless product recalls, loss of jobs, probably decades of added economic damage to Tohoku due to radiation fears, growing efforts to strangle the tsunami cleanup, and worse.

Here we see the ultimate cost, people ended up dead because some put fear ahead of reason.

As they march in the streets, or just demand a zero-tolerance hyper-cautious policy, these types claim, “Just saving ONE life is worth any cost.”

What about when the cost is 11 lives?

Interesting site tabulating the death toll around the world caused by of putting fear, superstition, etc. ahead of reason and science. People who ended up dead because someone thought, “What’s the harm?”

The toll so far: 368,379 people killed, 306,096 injured and over $2,815,931,000 in economic damages http://whatstheharm.net/
Anonymous

What a sad state of affairs.
Anonymous

“Many of the deaths can be linked the stress of relocation.”

Really, exactly how are they linked? That statement is as scientifically weak as the original panic.

How many non-involved elderly people died in that same time frame? That’s what old people do, they die – being able to link their death to a specific cause is seldom easy or obvious.

http://www.japanprobe.com James

Just paraphrasing what was said from the link:

各施設では移動や避難生活での疲労、環境変化などが多くの
死につながったとみており、少なくとも２３人の遺族が自治体
に災害関連死の申請をしている。

Sure, elderly people die all the time, but 77 out of 826 (almost 10%) in a 3 month period still seems pretty high.

It doesn’t at all seem unreasonable to think that the extraordinary stress of being uprooted and moved could cause worsening of health and even death.

http://hanlonsrzr.blogspot.com Ἀντισθένης

Both of you have fair points. I expect most of the deaths were in palliative care, where the death rate in three months may be 10%. Need more facts and an actuary to sort this out.
Anonymous

It’s not an unreasonable assumption, but it’s not scientific either.

We’d need to know the percentage of people from that age bracket that normally die in that time frame.

If it was 1%, then having 10% die from the study group would be significant. If it was 8% then a mere 2% more isn’t all that shocking.

And remember, it’s not how many elderly people in the general population die in three months, it’s how many elderly people in Hospitals and Nursing Homes die in that time frame. If they were old but healthy, they wouldn’t be in those institutions.

Comment

This was a no win situation. If they had left the people there, and then it turned out the radiation levels had become too high, then this too would be condemned. It is easy to look back with the clarity of hindsight and say perhaps they should have been left alone.

I cannot fault the authorities for making the decision they made. If I had been in their shoes, with the information they had at the time, with the stress level of the responsibility they had, and further stress from the earthquake, tsunami, and reactor situation, I probably would have made the same choice.

Certainly it can be argued that they didn’t need to go to the decontamination area before being evacuated. But this too is playing ‘armchair administrator’ after the fact. Those authorities had a lot on their minds at the time. A whole lot.

Excessive Radiation Fears Caused Deaths of Elderly Hospital Patients in Fukushima?

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