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After the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, little attention was paid to how the radiation leaks can affect the health of children living in the U.S. Joseph Mangano, epidemiologist and Executive Director of the Radiation and Public Health Project research group, spoke to the Voice of Russia about the study that showed that kids born after 2010 have some 26% percent higher risks of rare cancers and birth defects.

After the study by the Radiation and Public Health Project research was made public there was little response or reaction in the U.S. Although, Joseph Mangano expects to hear from people more as there are great concerns about the safety of food in water, even in the U.S., from Fukushima.

“We just published a study in the Open Journal of Pediatrics. We looked at two types of data: one was the EPA statistics on how much radiation was in the air in the weeks and months after Fukushima (it was much higher in the West Coast than in the rest of the country), and number two – we looked at the state of California’s official statistics on newborns who are born with a condition called hypothyroidism, which is where the thyroid is underactive. It is something that is known to be affected by exposure to radioactive Iodine which is only created in atomic bombs which haven’t been exploded for years and nuclear reactor emissions,” explains Joseph Mangano.

The Fukushima nuclear disaster is quite harmful for human health, although it happened in Japan, all the way across the ocean, the contaminated waters and polluted air can easily reach the continent on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

“Studies almost three years ago found that the plume of radiation that escaped from Fukushima arrived on the West Coast of the U.S. just five days after the initial meltdown. It doesn’t take long: once these radioactive particles in gases get in the air, it moves along with prevailing winds and keeps travelling until it returns to the environment through rain and snow,” says epidemiologist Joseph Mangano in an interview with the Voice of Russia.

The aim of the study is to find the correlation between the increased cases of hypothyroidism disease in children and the consequences of the Fukushima catastrophe.

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