Radioactivity endangers the food chain; island inhabitants are first victims

The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) issues a warning against downplaying the dangers of radioactive contamination in the Pacific following the nuclear disaster in Fukushima. "Several hundred million people live on fish caught in the Pacific Ocean, including many indigenous peoples on the islands," said Ulrich Delius of the STP's Asia section on Wednesday in Göttingen. "It is worse than an untenable trivialization when scientists in Japan assert that radioactive contamination of fish is not a problem because the radioactivity remains concentrated in the bones of the fish, which are not eaten by people. Every year, thousands of tons of fish – with bones – are made into fish meal, animal feed and even fish sticks or fish fingers. Furthermore, scientific theories about fast dilution of radioactive particles in the sea have long since proved useless in assuaging the fears of the indigenous peoples: After all of the nuclear weapons testing in the region, many of the people living here still suffer serious effects on their health caused by small amounts of radiation, after having been told for decades that the radiation was not dangerous.

"The indigenous peoples of the Pacific are the victims of the Atomic Age. They were never asked whether they approved of this form of energy. And now they are helpless victims of its consequences," reported Delius. After atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as decades after atomic weapons testing by the US, Great Britain and France on Pacific islands, this ocean is basically a cesspool of contamination with incalculable radioactive hazards.

According to the STP, there are four time-bombs in the Pacific Ocean: On the islands of Moruroa and Fangataufa, France carried out nuclear testing from 1966 to 1996, while the US chose the Bikini and Enewetok atolls for their tests (1946-1958). All of these islands, inhabited or regularly used by indigenous communities, have giant nuclear waste disposal sites that are neither adequately secured nor subject to independent monitoring.

In the French nuclear testing areas and the formerly American territories of Micronesia, radiation victims have joined forces in recent years. The truth about their health problems, to some extent catastrophic, was hidden from them for decades. The number of cancer cases and birth defects is extraordinarily high. There is no way for them to avoid the radioactivity that comes from the constant, low-level, supposedly harmless irradiation: "The Pacific Ocean is their supermarket, their living room and their pharmacy," reported Delius. "Nowhere on Earth are humans more closely connected to the sea than in the Pacific Islands."