Great Ratio of Thyroid Cancer among Young People in Fukushima

Since January 2022, Tokyo District Court has accumulated trials on a lawsuit by seven patients of thyroid cancer, who allegedly suffered from radiation emitted from crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (FDNPS) in March 2011. It is estimated that the ratio of discovered cancers among young people in Fukushima area was extremely high. The plaintiffs argue that the reasoning of the government of Japan and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which attributed that high rate to unusual number of inspections, is inappropriate. 

The accident in FDNPS is estimated as having emitted 500 PBq (petabecquerel) of noble gases, 500 PBq of iodine 131, 10 PBq of cesium 134 and 10PBq of cesium137 to the air, when its three reactors caused hydrogen explosions after they were hit by great tsunami of East Japan Great Earthquake on March 11th, 2011. Iodine 131, which has a half-life of 8 days, does not ordinarily exist in the air and is known as being accumulated in human thyroid, causing thyroid cancer.

 

Fukushima prefectural government started health survey of its residents three months after the accident. As its result, 380 thousand of people at age of 18 or younger at the time of Fukushima accident in 2011 had echo test of their thyroids in these 15 years. The test found that 408 people had thyroid cancer. Pediatric thyroid cancer is as rare as 2 cases out of 1 million people for a year. 408 cases out of 380 thousand people in 15 years is extremely high rate in developments.

 

The seven plaintiffs of the lawsuit believe that their cancer was caused by radiation stemming from the accident in FDNPS. “I want to know why I developed thyroid cancer” is a common sentiment of young patient of thyroid cancer in Fukushima. They are socially coerced to be silent, because some people in Fukushima believe that the argument of patients may slowdown the efforts for reconstruction.

 

The government of Japan and TEPCO argue that those patients were found, because the health tests were made on an extraordinarily great number of people and the test discovered many cancer cases for which medical treatment would not be necessary. The government and TEPCO do not recognize relationship between those cancer cases and the severe accident in FDNPS.

 

It does not explain, however, the large frequency of finding thyroid cancer in Fukushima. Based on the ratio of 2 out of 1 million, the frequency of pediatric thyroid cancer in Fukushima is about 35 times higher than ordinary one. Attorney at law for the plaintiffs Ken-ichi Ido, argues that a one-year-old baby living in Fukushima city between the evening of March 15 and the morning of March 16 in 2011 had 60 mSv of internal exposure to radiation in the thyroid. “Major news organizations in Japan ignores this fact,” Ido said in a press conference at Foreign Correspondent Club of Japan on March 10th, 2026.

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