Nuclear Fishin'

[This story was nominated for a Canadian Association of Journalists award for investigative reporting and by the Western Magazine Awards for a prize in the environment category. -AR]

Japanese tests have revealed high radiation levels in some Pacific Ocean seafood, creating concern among doctors at B.C. universities

by Alex Roslin
The Georgia Straight
July 19, 2012

Are fish from the Pacific Ocean and Japanese coastal and inland waters safe to eat 16 months after the Fukushima nuclear disaster?

Governments and many scientists say they are. But the largest collection of data on radiation in Japanese fish tells a very different story.

In June, 56 percent of Japanese fish catches tested by the Japanese government were contaminated with cesium-137 and -134. (Both are human-made radioactive isotopes—produced through nuclear fission—of the element cesium.)

And 9.3 percent of the catches exceeded Japan’s official ceiling for cesium, which is 100 becquerels per kilogram (Bq/kg). (A becquerel is a unit of radioactivity equal to one nuclear disintegration per second.)

Radiation levels remain especially high in many species that Japan has exported to Canada in recent years, such as cod, sole, halibut, landlocked kokanee, carp, trout, and eel.

Of these species, cod, sole, and halibut, which are oceanic species, could also be fished by other nations that export their Pacific Ocean catch to Canada.

The revelations come from the Japanese Fisheries Agency’s radiation tests on almost 14,000 commercial fish catches in both international Pacific and Japanese waters since March 11, 2011, when an earthquake and tsunami triggered multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

The wrecked plant spewed enormous amounts of radiation into the Pacific, where cesium levels near the Fukushima coast shot up to an astonishing 45 million times the pre-accident levels.

Japan’s Fisheries Agency data is easily the most comprehensive on Fukushima’s radioactive impacts on the Pacific Ocean, home to the world’s biggest fishery and a major food source for more than a billion people.

The numbers show that far from dissipating with time, as government officials and scientists in Canada and elsewhere claimed they would, levels of radiation from Fukushima have stayed stubbornly high in fish. In June 2012, the average contaminated fish catch had 65 becquerels of cesium per kilo. That’s much higher than the average of five Bq/kg found in the days after the accident back in March 2011, before cesium from Fukushima had spread widely through the region’s food chain.

In some species, radiation levels are actually higher this year than last.

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[Read the rest of this story here and the original version on the Georgia Straight's website here.]

After Fukushima, fish tales

by Alex Roslin
January 14, 2012
The Montreal Gazette

After the world’s worst nuclear accident in 25 years, authorities in Canada said people living here were safe and faced no health risks from the fallout from Fukushima.

They said most of the radiation from the crippled Japanese nuclear power plant would fall into the ocean, where it would be diluted and not pose any danger.

Dr. Dale Dewar wasn’t convinced. Dewar, a family physician in Wynyard, Sask., doesn’t eat a lot of seafood herself, but when her grandchildren come to visit, she carefully checks seafood labels.

She wants to make sure she isn’t serving them anything that might come from the western Pacific Ocean.

Dewar, the executive director of Physicians for Global Survival, a Canadian anti-nuclear group, says the Canadian government has downplayed the radiation risks from Fukushima and is doing little to monitor them.

“We suspect we’re going to see more cancers, decreased fetal viability, decreased fertility, increased metabolic defects – and we expect them to be generational,” she said.

And evidence has emerged that the impacts of the disaster on the Pacific Ocean are worse than expected.

Since a tsunami and earthquake destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant last March, radioactive cesium has consistently been found in 60 to 80 per cent of Japanese fishing catches each month tested by Japan’s Fisheries Agency.

In November, 65 per cent of the catches tested positive for cesium (a radioactive material created by nuclear reactors), according to a Gazette analysis of data on the fisheries agency’s website. Cesium is a long-lived radionuclide that persists in the environment and increases the risk of cancer, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, which says the most common form of radioactive cesium has a half-life of 30 years.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which monitors food safety, says it is aware of the numbers but says the amounts of cesium detected are small.

“Approximately 60 per cent of fish have shown to have detectable levels of radionuclides,” it said in an emailed statement.

“The majority of exported fish to Canada are caught much farther from the coast of Japan, and the Japanese testing has shown that these fish have not been contaminated with high levels of radionuclides.”

But the Japanese data shows elevated levels of contamination in several seafood species that Japan has exported to Canada in recent years.

In November, 18 per cent of cod exceeded a new radiation ceiling for food to be implemented in Japan in April – along with 21 per cent of eel, 22 per cent of sole and 33 per cent of seaweed.

Overall, one in five of the 1,100 catches tested in November exceeded the new ceiling of 100 becquerels per kilogram. (Canada’s ceiling for radiation in food is much higher: 1,000 becquerels per kilo.)

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[Read the entire story here, and visit my investigative journalism blog here.]

The Pill Pushers

Pharmaceutical giants employ "detailers" who specialize in persuading physicians to prescribe their companies' drugs

By Alex Roslin

September 4, 2008

The Georgia Straight

[This story won the Canadian Association of Journalists award for best investigative journalism in a magazine and was a finalist for the investigative journalism prize of the National Magazine Awards for 2008.]

When Shahram Ahari went to work at pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly straight out of college in New Jersey, he was hired to do a job that few people know exists. Even the job title would be a mystery to most people. Ahari was going to be a “detailer”.

His job was to schmooze with doctors in order to get them to prescribe Lilly’s drugs. He was really a salesman, but he was also much more. His tools included everything from free drugs to offers of lucrative speaking engagements, even trips. He’d bring medical residents pizza for lunch or invite a doctor to dinner at an exclusive restaurant. He’d do anything to improve sales in his New York City district, which meant a bigger bonus.

The first hint of the strange world Ahari had entered came when he was brought to Indianapolis for Lilly’s intensive, six-week boot camp for detailers. There, he met his fellow trainees. They were hundreds of fellow college grads, mostly in their mid-20s, perhaps two-thirds of them women, the vast majority beautiful.

“They were 200 or 300 of the most attractive people I had ever seen,” he said in a phone interview. “The physical appeal was only part of it. They were vivacious, well-coiffured, well-dressed, engaging people.”

Ahari soon learned that charisma was more important in his new job than, say, medical or scientific knowledge. He was the only one in his class of 22 trainees with a science degree, he said.

The training was part CIA, part Freud. He learned to immediately spot items in a doctor’s office that could be used to strike up a personal conversation and, ultimately, friendship: golf paraphernalia, photos of trips or kids, religious items. The information would later be entered into the company’s file on the doctor and analyzed for future approaches.

“It was analogous to training in spy agencies,” said Ahari, who ended up working for Lilly for a year and a half in New York City. “You instantly suss up the person’s personality and look for points of entry. You capitalize on sexual appeal. My more attractive colleagues would say, ‘I’m going to wear my short skirt today,’ or ‘I’m going to wear my low-cleavage top. He [the doctor] seems to get a kick out of that.’ ”

The practice of detailing has come under growing scrutiny in B.C. Two-thirds of doctors in the province say drug reps visit them at least once a month, according to a 2006 survey by the B.C. Medical Association. Forty-two percent of general practitioners are visited several times a week. ...

Read the rest of the story at The Georgia Straight's website here. Also surf to these follow-up stories: "Pharmacies sell prescription info to drug makers" and "B.C. Health Minister won't prevent gifts going to doctors."