More US sailors claim cancer from helping at Fukushima

[Shiloh]

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/12/2...ilors-claim-cancer-from-helping-at-fukushima/


Sickened by service: More US sailors claim cancer from helping at Fukushima
By Perry Chiaramonte
Published December 20, 2013
FoxNews.com

When the USS Ronald Reagan responded to the tsunami that struck Japan in March 2011, Navy sailors including Quartermaster Maurice Enis gladly pitched in with rescue efforts.

But months later, while still serving aboard the aircraft carrier, he began to notice strange lumps all over his body. Testing revealed he'd been poisoned with radiation, and his illness would get worse. And his fiance and fellow Reagan quartermaster, Jamie Plym, who also spent several months helping near the Fukushima nuclear power plant, also began to develop frightening symptoms, including chronic bronchitis and hemorrhaging.

They and 49 other U.S. Navy members who served aboard the Reagan and sister ship the USS Essex now trace illnesses including thyroid and testicular cancers, leukemia and brain tumors to the time spent aboard the massive ship, whose desalination system pulled in seawater that was used for drinking, cooking and bathing. In a lawsuit filed against Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the plaintiffs claim the power company delayed telling the U.S. Navy the tsunami had caused a nuclear meltdown, sending huge amounts of contaminated water into the sea and, ultimately, into the ship's water system...

 

[Shiloh]

Re: More US sailors claim cancer from helping at Fukushima

Source: http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2014/02/26/navy-lieutenant-power-plant-mission-ruined-my-health/

Navy Lieutenant: Power Plant Mission Ruined My Health
February 26, 2014 11:59 PM
Vic Carter

BALTIMORE (WJZ) ? A historic earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, causing a nuclear power meltdown. The US Navy rushed in to help?but are those sailors now paying the price? Nearly 100 believe that mission ruined their health.

Vic Carter reports a Navy lieutenant from Maryland who can no longer walk is demanding someone take responsibility for what?s happened...

 

[Emily]

Re: More US sailors claim cancer from helping at Fukushima

Quote from CBS article:

“Drawing a cause and effect for individuals is exceedingly difficult,” said Johns Hopkins University Prof. [].

If this is the same person, he is a writing professor, not a science or medicine faculty member, though he wrote a field guide to radiation:

Undergraduate in the school of electrical engineering and a graduate student in the English department’s master of fine arts program.

I don't think that Pentagon is doing right by these sailors, nor the soldiers exposed to burning toxic waste in Iraq and Afghanistan. The same pencil pushers seem to question cause and effect in those cases, too. Have they thrown common sense and decency out the window?

 

[Emily]

Re: More US sailors claim cancer from helping at Fukushima

https://www.law360.com/classaction/articles/576910/tepco-moves-to-block-sailors-new-1b-fukushima-suit

Tepco Moves To Block Sailors' New $1B Fukushima Suit

Share us on: By Juan Carlos Rodriguez
Law360, New York (September 12, 2014, 4:54 PM ET)
...
...The sailor first-responders alleged they were sent to the Fukushima region as part of Operation Tomadachi, providing aid to victims of the natural disaster that caused the nuclear plant failure. The company should have warned the soldiers about the meltdown before they arrived, the second amended complaint says.

In March, Tepco again moved to dismiss the case, arguing the sailors had failed to cure the core justiciability defects, and that the second amended complaint suffered from multiple additional fatal legal defects. A hearing was scheduled for Aug. 25, but four days before that, the sailors asked to amend the complaint again.

According to that motion, they want to add General Electric Co., Toshiba Corp., Hitachi Ltd. and Ebasco as defendants, add additional details about the alleged design and manufacturing defects in the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, and add new plaintiffs....

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/radiation-608614-tepco-navy.html

Lawsuit: Fukushima disaster poisoned U.S. sailors

Crew of USS Ronald Reagan says Japanese utility?s failure to warn of radiation risks during 2011 tsunami relief effort led to excess exposure, illness.

BY TERI SFORZA / STAFF COLUMNIST
Published: April 6, 2014 Updated: April 9, 2014 1:46 p.m.

...

?Before the USS Ronald Reagan and Carrier Strike Group 7 arrived 2 miles off the coast, Fukushima Unit 1 blew up,? says a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of the sailors. ?Then Unit 3 exploded, releasing plumes of hydrogen gases migrating through a shared vent, which destroyed the containment building at Unit 4, exposing the spent fuel pool to the air. Unit 2 followed suit.?

Sailors on the flight deck said they felt a warm gust of air, followed by a sudden snow storm: radioactive steam. Freezing in the cold Pacific air. Blanketing their ship.

...

In the three years since, dozens have developed cancers, at least one has borne a child with birth defects, and all ?must now endure a lifetime of radiation poisoning and suffering which could have and should have been avoided,? the lawsuit says.

...

NAVY SAYS EXPOSURE WAS ?LOW LEVEL?

Some critics on the ecological front say the Reagan, now stationed in San Diego, is still so radioactive that it needs to be sunk. It floated around the Pacific for many weeks after the Fukushima humanitarian mission ended, as no Pacific Rim country would give it permission to dock.

...

We?ll keep you posted on how the judge rules on the new suit and TEPCO?s motion to dismiss. The Reagan, for its part, is slated to move to a new home port this year. In Japan.