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Saturday, March 19, 2011

Japan mulls Fukushima food sale ban

Japan mulls Fukushima food sale ban: "VIENNA (Reuters) - Japan is considering whether to halt sales of food products from near a crippled nuclear plant because of contamination by a radioactive element which can pose a short-term health risk, the U.N. atomic agency said.

'There is an investigation into the possible need to stop food sales,' Graham Andrew, a senior official of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told reporters.

The IAEA had earlier said Japan's health ministry 'ordered a stop to the sale of all food products from the Fukushima Prefecture' but Andrew said this was due to a mistranslation of information provided in Japanese.

In what it called another 'critical' measure to counter contamination of food, the IAEA in a statement said Japanese authorities on March 16 recommended that people leaving the area should ingest stable iodine.

Taken as pills or syrup, stable (non-radioactive) iodine can be used to help protect against thyroid cancer in the event of radiation exposure in a nuclear accident."

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