Monday, October 31, 2011

Tea and radiation in Japan 2


The other day I learned two cases about radiation-contained tea found at France and Tokyo.  Both cases happened in Jun 2011.  I’m sorry that I did not know about them when I wrote the previous entry about “Tea and radiation in Japan”.



Case in France

The tea was found in an inspection at Charles de Gaulle Airport in France.  The tea was imported from Shizuoka Japan and it contained 1038bq of radiation.  They were discarded.

Source: J-cast News (Japanese) http://www.j-cast.com/2011/06/19098848.html



Case in Tokyo

A mail order company, Radish-boya in Tokyo found the tea with radiation on their self-imposed test.  The tea was from Sizuoka and 521-569bq radioactive cesium.  Shizuoka prefecture has requested the manufacturer to recall it and stop further distribution.




The Japanese safety limit for tea is 500bq/kg of radiation.  The tea on both cases was over the limit and they were both from Shizuoka prefecture.  I looked for the cause and measures in response to these incidences, but I could not find any additional information about them.   I also searched on the internet if there are any other cases, but I could not find any.  So, I believe these are not frequently happening cases but I thought that you should know that there were defects on the inspection.  If I find more information about the radiation on tea, I’ll introduce them on my blog.



My past entries about the radiation and tea








Edited on Nov 4
New entry about tea and radiation
http://everyonestea.blogspot.com/2011/11/tea-production-regions-far-from.html

4 comments:

  1. Oh no! That's worrisome. How much tea is grown in the affected region?

    http://sagacitea.blogspot.com/

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  2. Shizuoka prefecture is the biggest tea producing region in Japan. Their production is about 40% of the entire Japanese tea (the data from 2009).

    Shizuoka is not only the prefecture where radioactive tea has been found, but also in other prefectures such as Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma, Chiba and Kanagawa. This doesn’t have to mean that teas from those prefectures are all contaminated. There are places called Hot Spots, those are areas where high radioactivity is present. Radioactive substances were found in the tea from some of those areas. (Sauce from Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (Japanese) http://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/houdou/2r9852000001dd6u.html) Those radioactive teas are restricted for distribution.

    The problem is not the affected area. The problem is that there were defects on the inspection and teas which are found positive of high radiation content were distributed. I wanted to let my blog readers to know about it.

    However, I’m still having tea from Shizuoka. I believe these are rare cases. If by any possibility my tea is one of those teas, I personally think the contaminated level is not that much for me to worry about.

    If you don’t feel comfortable having tea from those areas, we have many other tea producing regions far from Fukushima. Listed prefectures are top ten producing regions (except Shizuoka) and I have not heard about any contaminated tea from the areas.
    2. Kagoshima (Ei, Chiran, Makurazaki, Ariake)
    3. Mie (Ise, Mizusawa, Suzuka, Kameyama, Iga)
    4. Miyazaki (Miyakonojo)
    5. Kyoto (Uji, Ayabe, Ryotan, Wazuka)
    6. Nara (Yamato, Tukigase, Yamazoe)
    7. Saga (Ureshino, Karatsu)
    8. Kumamoto (Yabe, Izumi, Sagara, Kahoku)
    9. Aichi (Nishio, Toyota, Shinsiro)
    10. Nagasaki (Ureshino, Sonogi, Sechibaru, Goto)

    Information on the Great East Japan Earthquake at Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (English) go to >>> http://www.mhlw.go.jp/english/topics/2011eq/index.html

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  3. and yet so much censurship about this in japan :-X

    ReplyDelete
  4. and yet so much censurship about this in japan :-X

    ReplyDelete