Japanese fallout

How's the atomically at ease Andrew Bolt going? Over the weekend, he reproduced much of Ann Coulter’s column pointing out that some increased radiation might actually be good for you. See, what are you complaining about, Japanese people near Fukushima?

Let's be clear - the idea that low level of radiation may actually not be bad for you has been around for some time. (I've mentioned it myself here before.) But it's also a fact that some types of radioactive fallout from broken reactors do cause cancers, particularly in children.

It is, to put it mildly, insensitive for anyone to be talking of the possible positive results of Fukushima at the moment. An unusually large number of Bolt's commenters seem to have chided him for this post; I'm not on my own.

Some corrections to what Coulter, and Bolt, said can be found at (the very annoying) PZ Myers and a Scientific American blog.

Back at the New York Times, there is a short follow up from Nicholas Kristoff about his column on Japan I mentioned last week. I didn't know this:

It’s the fact that the easiest people to steal from are the police. You see, you just walk up to any police box (koban) at a train station and say you need money to get home, and you’ll get $20 or whatever in train fair. You have to give your name and promise to pay it back, but you don’t have to show any I.D. When I once asked a policeman why they didn’t require I.D., he looked at me as if I was very slow and said something to the effect: People need train money because they’ve lost their wallets. But if they’ve lost their wallets, they don’t have I.D. He added, though, that a day or two later, the borrower invariably comes by to repay the money.

All the comments that follow are worth reading too.

Update: for Andrew Bolt -

The Japanese government on Monday told people not to drink the tap water in a village near the quake-hit nuclear power plant after high levels of radioactive iodine were detected.

Abnormal but much lower levels of radioactive iodine had already been found in the water supply in Tokyo and surrounding prefectures including Fukushima, where the troubled plant and the village of Iitatemura is located.

The health ministry said 965 becquerels per kilogramme of radioactive iodine was found in water which was sampled on Sunday in Iitatemura, which is 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the Fukushima No.1 plant.

It is more than three times the level the government considers advising people to limit the intake of water.

"There is no immediate effect on health if it is taken temporarily," ministry official Shogo Misawa said of tap water in Iitatemura.

"But as a precaution, we are advising people in the village through the prefectural office to refrain from drinking it."

The prefecture of Fukushima is preparing to provide about 4,000 people in the village with bottled water, media reports said.