NIGERIA has joined countries that have banned food imports from Japan, as radioactive steam continued at the weekend to leak from the Fukushima nuclear plant damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
Health Minister, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, at the weekend directed the National Food, Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC) to temporarily restrict all food and water imports from Japan
“I have directed NAFDAC to intensify the examination of all food imports and suspend for now the importation of food and water from Japan,” he told The Guardian.
He, however, explained that food and water imported into the country before the March 11 earthquake and tsunami are not affected by the ban.
He stressed that although the extent of contamination remains unclear, government is concerned about the potential for danger to human life through the consumption of the contaminated foods.
Abubakar Jimoh, the spokesman of NAFDAC confirmed the ministerial directive, stressing that the agency has already alerted all the security agencies in the ports and borders on the need for immediate compliance.
He said the agency has the required competence and facilities to screen all foods and water products coming into the country.
Taiwan was among the first countries to detect mild levels of radiation in a shipment of fava beans, but decided to ban imports only after radiation was also found in a batch of imported Japanese clams, tested on Thursday.
The United States (U.S.) and Hong Kong have already restricted Japanese food, and France wants the European Union (EU) to do the same.
Russia ordered a halt to food imports from four prefectures in Japan while Australia banned produce from the area, including seaweed and seafood, milk, dairy products, fresh fruit and vegetables,” the news service reported.
Singapore, Canada and the Philippines also took action to limit food imports from Japan.
While many EU countries are yet to announce bans on Japanese food imports, Germany and France have started screening food samples.
“Japan’s government has also halted shipments of untreated milk and vegetables from Fukushima and three adjoining prefectures, and stepped up radiation monitoring at another six, covering an area that borders Tokyo,” AFP reports. “
The health ministry has detected 82,000 becquerels of radioactive caesium – 164 times the safe limit – in the green vegetable kukitachina, and elevated levels in another 10 vegetables, including cabbage and turnips,” according to the news service.
However, experts still consider the levels of radiation as too limited as to pose great health risks.
To them, the potential for danger to human life through imported food is still considered limited as these are very mild levels of radiation.
The experts claim that an adult will need to consume 3.5 kilogrammes of contaminated vegetables to receive a comparable level of radiation that is present in an X-ray.
An adult individual will need to consume 184 kilogrammes of contaminated vegetables to be exposed to as much radiation as a normal human being receives a year from direct sunlight and other normal sources.
Meanwhile, radiation concerns spread to Tokyo where authorities “warned that very young children in the Japanese capital should not drink tap water after it was found to contain twice the levels of radioactive iodine considered safe for infants.
“Tokyo’s water bureau said babies and infants under the age of one should not be given tap water, but added that radiation levels did not pose an immediate risk to adults."
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