BANGKOK – Masao
Yoshida had been the chief manager of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power
plant for just nine months when, on March 11, 2011, a massive earthquake and
tsunami triggered a triple nuclear reactor meltdown. The plant spewed
radioactive material into the air and water, terrifying the Japanese public and
much of the world. Yoshida’s death last week from cancer under the pall of that
nuclear disaster brings to mind how vulnerable facts can be to distortion.
A fearful public quickly lost
confidence in official communications channels after repeated failures, and
people looked instead to the news media for information. But, as it turned out,
the media could not be relied on fully, either, with even the most respected
outlets unnecessarily feeding public anxiety.
Accurate information was
understandably difficult to obtain in the weeks immediately following the
accident, but misinformation persisted even when scientific data on radiation
levels and reactor stability had become more readily available. Even The
New York Times, which provided some truly excellent on-the-ground
reporting, contributed at times to public alarm during the recovery, owing to
misleading – and sometimes incorrect – statements. Three examples of reporting
that was clearly flawed at the time, not just in hindsight, demonstrate the
point.
In October 2011, the Times compared radiation levels in “hot spots” in Tokyo to “some
contaminated areas around Chernobyl.” The information was technically accurate,
but the menacing impression of pockets of radioactive apocalypse was not. The
article uses the reference point of “37,000 becquerels per square meter, the
level at which zones were considered contaminated at Chernobyl,” but fails to
mention that this boundary is for the most peripheral of the
Chernobyl-contaminated zones and considered habitable. The associated potential
“dosage of more than one millisievert per year” could more comprehensibly (and
much less frighteningly) be likened to the approximate difference in additional
annual radiation exposure that the average resident of the United States
experiences compared to the average resident of Japan due to natural background
radiation. And even this tame non-Chernobyl comparison overstates the real
dose, because it is analogous to a large contamination zone rather than a
localized “hot spot.”
Likewise, the following January, the
Times reported that Japan’s government would soon impose stricter
food-safety radiation regulations, “bringing Japan in line with most developed
countries.” This statement, made in passing, wrongly implied that Japan’s
regulations at the time were notably lax, heightening the paranoia about what
were already some of the world’s most strictly radionuclide-regulated food
supplies (even before restrictions were further tightened).
Two months later, in an ominously
titled article, “Japan Nuclear Plant May Be Worse Off Than Thought,” the Times
called into question the stability of one of the reactors. After citing test
results showing that water levels in fuel-containment vessels were lower than
expected, the article described worst-case scenarios, such as overheating and
leakage of contaminated water into the ground or ocean. But the Times
neglected to mention that tests of the water’s temperature conducted
simultaneously actually suggested that the situation was stabilizing.
Fearful communities are deeply
affected by this type of reporting. While enormous amounts of time and
resources have been dedicated to learning the technical lessons of the
Fukushima accident (and rightly so), not enough have been spent on trying to
understand and address the damage to public health caused by misinformation.
Ideally, trusted experts would
regularly be on hand to inform a more scientifically literate public and press.
What could be done now to improve post-crisis reporting would be to introduce a
sort of scientific ombudsman – someone with strong credentials, access to the
world’s leading experts, and a talent for communicating technical concepts to
the general public effectively. International news sources could employ such a
person expressly to assess statements issued by governments, journalists, and
commentators on large-scale public-health crises such as nuclear accidents,
epidemics, and oil spills.
In the wake of the Fukushima meltdown,
a trusted expert handing out veracity scores, or “Pinocchios,” in a respected
newspaper would have given the public a greater sense of certainty in an
atmosphere of fear and mistrust. That would certainly have been extremely
popular among a public desperate for reliable information. One hopes that,
during the next major public-health crisis, when people are foundering in a sea
of unverified, often-alarming information, such a system will be in place to
help keep everyone afloat.
David Roberts is
former Science Adviser to the US Ambassador to Japan.
Ted Lazo is Deputy
Division Head for Radiation Protection at the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency.