If that's really true, that's FOUR years' worth of normal exposure in America IN A CALENDAR DAY, AND STILL THEY WON'T EVACUATE Iitate, Japan.
Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, . . . said at a press conference in the afternoon [Thursday] that the agency's rough estimates have shown there is no need for people in Iitate to evacuate immediately under criteria set by the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan.
''The radiation dose of a person who was indoors for 16 hours and outdoors for eight hours (and continued such a lifestyle) would be about 25 millisieverts, which is about half the level which requires evacuation based on the commission's criteria,'' he said.
The commission explained that domestic criteria are based on measurements at radiation in the air, and not the soil.
The data was buried here, in a story about groundwater contamination near reactor one. The technique appears to be an old one: casually refer to the touchiest subject as an aside in a report about something entirely unrelated.
