Around 2,000 Fukushima Workers At Risk of Thyroid Cancer 124
mdsolar writes "Around 2,000 people who have worked at Japan's wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant face a heightened risk of thyroid cancer, its operator said Friday. Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) said 1,973 people — around 10 percent of those employed in emergency crews involved in the clean-up since the meltdowns — were believed to have been exposed to enough radiation to cause potential problems. The figure is a 10-fold increase on TEPCO's previous estimate of the number of possible thyroid cancer victims and comes after the utility was told its figures were too conservative. Each worker in this group was exposed to at least 100 millisieverts of radiation, projections show."
Re:Herpaderp derp (Score:2, Interesting)
100 mSv add 0.5% probability to the chance of getting cancer. Let's say that all of them die of it (actually thyroid cancer on treated patients has as survival rate of 75%-90%). Then the whole "disaster" might add to the death toll up to 9 more victims.
9 on 18,000. That's 0.05%.
Protip: when posting on slashdot, do the numbers.