Sputnik
Japan started discharging radioactive, tritium-laced wastewater from the earthquake and tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in late August, with all of the country's immediate neighbors, plus Mexico and countries in Latin America, voicing concern over the move. However, Japanese authorities assured that the procedure is safe.
The presence of even a low concentration of tritium in water is known to increase the risk of cancer by over 500%, Moscow State University oceanographer Sergey Mukhametov has told Sputnik.
As for the long-term effects of trace amounts of the hydrogen-derived isotope present in the filtered cooling water being dumped from the Fukushima nuclear site, scientists are yet to determine that, he added.
According to the expert, this conclusion has been made by American scientists David Kocher and Owen Hoffman from the Oak Ridge Center for Risk Analysis. Their research presented an assessment of lifetime risks of cancer incidence associated with the drinking water standard for tritium established by the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA).
In America, this standard is an “annual-average maximum contaminant level (MCL) of 740 becquerels per liter.”
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