Although it is a reason for concern I do concur with you that overreaction is far from useful in tackling this problem. Exposure from natural (as you say in some places relativly high) and medical sources is something the general public is unaware of. Seeing things in perspective is therefore a lot harder.

It’s a shame that a lot of experts (we have to rely on due to the complicated nature of assessing the threat levels here) are influenced by commercial and/or idiological reasons to understate or overstate the actual threat.
TEPCO itself is a infamous example herein.

Children vs Adults

I hold the view that for biological reasons that children should be subject to a set of radiological protection rules which are stricter than those imposed on adults. For example UK and Swedish law both quite rightly have a minimum age at which a person can be a radiation worker. Also a trainee between the ages of 16 and 18 has to be on a more restrictive set of radiation rules than an adult.

This is due to the fact that a child has a longer life expectancy and because their cells are dividing more quickly. For example I know for the induction of female breast cancer that between the mid teens and the mid twenties that a girl / woman is more sensitive than a woman above the age of 30.

Occupational vs evacuation dose limits

But it is important not to fixate on radiation and ignore all other things. In Japan there is a problem. The occupational limit for a child in the UK and Sweden will be set at 1 mSv per year. This is because a child is always treated as a member of the general public for radiation protection law.

To my mind this law is about exposure of the child at school or if the child takes on a part time job. For example if I have a 14 year old who serves in a watch and clock shop. Then we should apply the 1 mSv limit, this could mean that if the doserate in the shop (due to radium containing watches) is sufficiently high that he/she will get more than a 1 mSv dose (above background) then the shop work is illegal on radiation grounds.

But while it is reasonable to apply this very low limit to occupational doses, I would argue that the dose limit for considering relocation of the general public could be set higher. If we relocate a person (evacuate) then a new home will be needed for the person. Also a great disruption to the person’s life will occur. We need to weigh up the risk due to radiation against the other risks. As a result the government in Japan have decided to set the lower limit for some types of relocation at 20 mSv.

This has sparked some outrage and court cases, but when I looked today at a randomly chosen news article the doses which the children were being exposed to each year (2.2 mSv) from the accident are low. This is about the same as a typical child living in the UK. If the child has no other artificial radiation exposure then I hold the view that the level of risk does not justify the changes required when a person is relocated.

High background areas around the world

The high background in Iran is not unique, in some areas of India, China and Brazil the natural background level is very high. So I think the idea that the Iranian government have covered up disease for political reasons can be discounted.

Radioactivity in the environment from the Fukushima accident

The worst radioisotopes in Japan released by the Fukushima accident were the iodines (I-131, I-132 etc), these have decayed away long ago. A tiny amount of activity (I-129) would have been released but this is not a large threat to public health, it also allows years later the spread of I-131 to be reconstructed for public health investigations.

The current threat in Japan to the general public is due to cesium, the good news is that the cesium has a short biological half life in humans. This means that cesium does not build up in the human body, with a suitable choice of diet a person can avoid having radioactive cesium building up inside them.

Cesium does not enter bones and act as a calcium mimic, instead it is spread evenly through the whole body. On the otherhand strontium becomes part of the bones, as a result strontium-90 is more dangerous than cesium-137. But the good news is that at Fukushima very little strontium was released.

The external dose due to cesium needs to be controlled by cleaning up the environment, as cesium is not very mobile in soil it will be mostly in the top layer of the soil. Either the top layer should be removed or if the soil is mixed up then the external threat will be reduced and the level of cesium in grass will be lowered.

Farming needs to be altered for some years to prevent the transfer of cesium from soil to humans via food. One promising method of controlling cesium in the food chain is to use Prussian blue, this is cesium binding agent which can be used to decontaminate farmyard animals.

However, I’d like to raise a few questions:
How big are the chances the Iranian government would allow stories to leak of kids with radiation poisoning while they’re doing everything in their power to become an independant nuclear power?

What about long(er) term exposure due to inhaled, ingested or other intake of contaminated substances? (we know that the air has been contaminated for a period of time, so is dirt and it’s even found its way into the foodchain of fish)

Because children are still growing and cell division is the most vulnerable time where radiation is concerned, aren’t they more at risk?

In short, I concur with you that things might be exagerated here and there, but isn’t it more than prudent to be extra careful here?

Also while some things might be somewhere in the public domain, it is not a good idea for public safety for me to provide an easy to follow trail of breadcrumbs leading to well tested ways of doing some things. For example I have seen in the public domain (open journal) a method of making sarin together with the experimental details, I think that the authors should never have published it. While a well trained phosphorus chemist (I have a PhD in phosphorus chemistry) could work out how to make sarin, I do not think it is right to save a criminal or terrorist the effort of having to optimise the synthesis. I am sure that even a PhD educated P chemist might need to spend a lot of time working out how to get a good yield and purity in each step.

Being opposed to hate speech and speaking out against it is not ranting, would it be right to denounce Labi Siffre and the late Martin Luther King as ranters for speaking out against bigotry ?

One of my critics commented “I think we can grant people the validity of their feelings”, this is a deeply wrong and immoral attitude to take. I am sure that Anders Behring Breivik and David Copeland had a feeling of hatred and repulsion at leftwingers and gay people, their feelings do not make their despicable deeds any less immoral.

I am opposed to weak and poor academic practise and pseudo-accdemics aping the language of academia for their own personal causes.

If this is the famous Rosemary Radford then I would be glad to enter into a discussion with you by means of email.