Sunday, July 29, 2012

Disposable Workers Who Should Be Heroes


Fukushima disaster worker says subcontractors siphoned money from wages. The Mainichi http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20120728p2a00m0na017000c.html 

[Excerpted] "A man hired to help bring the disaster at the tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear plant under control has accused subcontractors of forcing him to work under illegal conditions and skimming off part of his wages...."

Majia here: This is yet another gross injustice against people who deserve to be treated as heroes:


Workers at the critical Fukushima plant have been treated as disposable. Many workers claimed they were not told they would be working at the plant when hired. They did not receive dosimeters to monitor their radiation exposure during the early weeks of the crisis.[i] The command center used by workers during cleanup was subsequently revealed to be contaminated, potentially causing thousands of workers to ingest radioactive particles. Testing of workers found hundreds were contaminated. A worker waded into radioactive water and was burned because he was not wearing appropriate protection. Workers were not required to wear waterproof ponchos when it rained, although rainwater is known to wash out radioactive contamination in the air.  
Ilya Perlingieri described these workers as expendable in her essay “No Protection for Fukushima’s Expendable Citizens or Us”:
On March 14, the Japanese industry of Health and Labor raised "the maximum [radiation] dose for workers to 250 mSv [milli Sieverts] a year" an increase in exposure from the previous 100 mSv.(7) These new figures are also drastically higher than those from the International Commission on Radiological Protection's guidelines stipulating a maximum of 20 mSv a year."[ii]
Workers at Fukushima’s devastated plant are clearly regarded as disposable, as are all of the Japanese citizens located within the contaminated zones. It was not therefore surprising when the Japanese news agency Mainichi reported on June 22 that the whereabouts of 30 Fukushima plant workers were unknown: "The workers' names were listed in records showing that they had been loaned dosimeters, but when the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), contacted the companies they were associated with, the companies replied that there was no record of those workers.[iii] By August, TEPCO was reporting that the whereabouts of 143 workers was unknown.[iv] Tepco also reported in August that a 40 year old worker died of acute leukemia after working at the plant for seven days.[v] .[vi] In July of 2012, it was revealed that a subcontractor at the Fukushima plant had required workers to blanket their personal radiation detection devices in lead in a fraudulent effort to keep their radiation exposure under the safety threshold.[vii]


[i]           Phred Dvorak “Japanese Nuclear Cleanup Workers Detail Lax Safety Practices at Plant,” The Wall Street Journal (2011, June 14): A1, A12.

[ii]           Ilya Perlingieri “No Protection For Fukushima's 'Expendable' Citizens Or Us,” Jeff Rense (2011, May 4): http://www.rense.com/general94/noprot.htm.

[iii]          "Whereabouts of 30 Nuclear Power Plant Subcontractors Unknown: Health Ministry" Mainichi (2011, June 21): http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110621p2a00m0na005000c.html.

[iv]          “TEPCO Says It Has Lost Contact with 143 Nuclear Plant Workers,” Japan Today (2011, August 10): http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/tepco-says-it-has-lost-contact-with-143-nuclear-plant-workers.
 
[v]           Obe Mitsuru. Japan Finds Radiation Spread Over a Wide Area. The Wall Street Journal 2012 August 31, A11.

[vi]          Obe Mitsuru. Japan Finds Radiation Spread Over a Wide Area. The Wall Street Journal 2012 August 31, A11.

[vii]             Reuters. Japan probes under-reporting of Fukushima radiation dosage. The Washington Post (2012, July 21),
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/japan-probes-under-reporting-of-fukushima-radiation-dosage/2012/07/21/gJQAdgJw0W_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.