Fear for contaminated breast milk

[From 母乳調査・母子支援ネットワーク the Support Network for mothers and children for the breast milk testing   http://bonyuutyousa.net/?p=13 ]

 

Fear for contaminated breast milk

There is fear for contaminated breast milk caused by the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster.

We’re calling on nursing mothers living in areas  where radiation levels are high to join breast milk testing. We also urge people across the country and the world to support the mothers and their babies for our movement.

Out of fear for breast milk contamination, we conducted tests on breast milk kindly offered by nine mothers: 5 from Ibaraki prefecture, 3 from Fukushima prefecture and one from Miyagi prefecture. Iodine 131 was detected in breast milk of more than one mother from Ibaraki while breast milk from Fukushima and Miyagi came out negative.

We were astonished by the fact that radioactive substance was actually found in breast milk. There can be various reasons for the result but what we are concerned is that the current radiation levels in the air, water, vegetables and the milk in neighboring areas of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant are affecting nursing mothers severely and may pose a risk to their babies health.

The mothers who took courage to offer us their milk did so because they desperately want to protect their babies. We need to support them and pursue to conduct more tests. And in case we get a positive result of contamination, we need to ensure safe evacuation, food, the water and the milk formula as well as substitute breast milk from other mothers for the family. We’d like to build up a network to meet these needs.

The Japanese government has repeatedly announced that there is no immediate threat to human health under the current radiation levels. But is it truly so? It was 10 years after the Chernobyl explosion that leukemia and thyroid cancer peaked in children. That’s why we hope to build our own data on the issue of breast milk contamination with help from the network of civil society. In the past, the official data was always in favor of the government, hurting victims’ causes, as in the Atomic Bomb diseases, the Chisso-Minamata disease, the toxic Kanemi oil disease and drug-related diseases.

Furthermore, the Japanese government has yet to investigate breast milk or published the result, if any. We suspect that it is because they are waiting for the physical evidence of internal contamination to become hard to identify.

The examination of breast milk can be the only measure to make internal exposure visible with the figures. We believe that building up data on food, environment and life-style in regard to radiation will inspire people to think about causes and solutions of internal exposure.

We, the Support Network for mothers and children for the breast milk testing, are calling for nursing mothers in contaminated areas to join the test and ask people across the country to donate for the tests and support.

April 21, 2011

the Support Network for mothers and children for the breast milk testing

Founders:

Kikuko Murakami

Ayako Oga

Saeko Uno

Mitunobu Ohishi

Kazumi Murai

Masaharu Kawada

Yukiko Mukai

Shinichi Kurobe

Chizuko Takahashi

Mai Murakami

Donate to: Japan Postal Bank(Yucho Bank)
Account Holder Name : 母乳調査・母子支援ネットワーク

Bank name : Yucho Bank

Branch:218
Account Number: 12170-70089991