It is easy to ignore the invisible. As humans, we do it all the time.
Radiation is invisible and, so, we choose to forget the Fukushima fallout in our rain and the creeping sickness spreading into our seas.
Ignoring between 5 and 20 tonnes of debris, some of which is likely to contain Fukushima contaminants, is not easy.
That debris is heading toward North American shores like a slow, lumbering monster - the stuff of nightmares, except, this time, we do not get to wake up.
The water in the wake of the debris is radioactive.
While the Japanese government and TEPCO assure us that the ocean will dilute the contamination, early research results indicate that this is not true.
There could have been a reprieve if the contamination was related only to the March explosions at the nuclear plant, and the initial emergency dumping of tonnes of radioactive water off the Fukushima coastline. Could have been.
The contamination continues - 7 months after the explosions.
In a few years from now, children will be splashing in radioactive waves off the west coasts of Canada and the United States.
Long before then, these children will eat fish caught in contaminated waters, and sample rice which Japan continues to export despite the fact that exporters and government officials know the rice is toxic.
I would like to believe that Japanese authorities are suffering from a case of uncontrollable self-denial. That would lend a sense of human frailty to their decision-making.
But the decisions are cold, calculated economic ones.
Exporters need a market to survive even when that market is threatened by the toxicity of the exports.
This is no different to a parasite which survives only because it has a host - even when its dependence kills the host.
Perhaps, even more pathetic, is the realization that Japan as exporter is also taking the lives of its own children.
Fukushima released a monster, and we are all in its way.
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This post is based on a personal summary of articles found on Enenews and Fairewinds websites.
