[CPEO-MEF] RADIATION, GLOBAL: Navy personnel exposed to low levels in Japan

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

17 in U.S. Navy Treated for Contamination
By THOM SHANKER
New York Times
March 14, 2011

WASHINGTON - American Navy officials in Japan said early Monday that  
17 military personnel who had been aboard three helicopters assisting  
in the earthquake relief effort had been exposed to low levels of  
contamination.

Cmdr. Jeff A. Davis, a spokesman for the American Seventh Fleet in  
Japan, said the Navy personnel - who apparently had flown through a  
radioactive plume from a damaged nuclear power plant - had been  
ordered to dispose of their uniforms and to undergo a decontamination  
scrub that had successfully removed radioactive particles.

"They received very, very low levels of contamination," Commander  
Davis said in a telephone interview from Japan early Monday.

"It certainly is not cause for alarm," he said. "It is something we  
have to watch very carefully and make sure we are able to monitor,  
and to mitigate against this environmental hazard."

The Navy personnel aboard the three helicopters had received the  
equivalent of one month's natural background radiation from the sun,  
rocks or soil, he said.


...

For the entire article, see
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/world/asia/14military.html?_r=1&src=mv

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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