Life style changes since large earth quake hit Japan 1

Today I would like to write about how large earthquake affect life style in Japan.

I do not know how much percentage of people in the world know the large earthquake hit Japan March 3 2011, but let me tell you how large it is. The observed magnitude was 9 which is 810,000 times as large as atomic bomb which was dropped to Hiroshima in 1945. Japanese is used to middle class earthquakes because earthquakes like 5, 6 class occurs somewhere in Japan every year, but this is the largest one which has ever hit Japan. As a result, more than 20000 peoples unfortunately died because of Tsunami which was equivalent to 10 meters, although number of peoples who died due to breakdown of house and building was less which showed how strong Japanese house is against even large earthquakes.

In addition to that, worst thing happened at the same time. Nuclear power plants collapsed and became out of control, and consequently evacuated much nuclear material, like, Iodine, Cerium, etc, due to melt down. These nuclear material spread out in south direction from nuclear plants, which is called Kanto including Tokyo, the economic center of Japan, and accumulated there. As our world experienced similar nuclear accident of Chernoby nuclear power plant case which occurred in 1986 in Ukraine, we have already known how nuclear radiation is dangerous and how terrible it affect on human body, especially small children. According to reports, people exposed to be nuclear material are likely to suffer from cancers and some of them can die. As is easily predicted, the risk of cancer is much higher for small children than for adults.  So a lot of people in Kanto are, especially those who have small kinds, have been concerning and afraid of its effect. Actually there are two kinds of exposures. One of them is called external exposure though skin, and another is called internal exposure by eating exposed food, like vegetables, fish, meet, chicken, pork etc which are harvested and caught in exposed area. Unfortunately, half life of accumulated nuclear material Cesium is 30 years, so Japanese people in Kanto area have to continue to worry about everything they eat and its effect, even though it will take more than a few years to be able to see its effects come out.

Next time, I would like to tell you about the story that fear for nuclear exposure drives people move to safe place.