Seikatsu Club’s Continuous Monitoring of Radiation
For Informed Choices

It has been four years since the nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The Seikatsu Club Consumers’ Co-operative Union (SCCCU) has equipped its two delivery centers with radiation detectors, and continues to carry out screening tests on all of its food items to detect radiation levels. SCCCU takes appropriate measures if needed.

◆Voluntary Standard Stricter than the Government Standard

SCCCU believes that there should be no "threshold" for radioactivity which can be considered safe, and takes the position that the internal radiation dose from food should be as small as possible. SCCCU held a series of intensive discussions with its suppliers, finally resulting in the adoption of its voluntary acceptance levels in August 2012 (Table 1). While the government only takes internal exposure (*1) to radiation into consideration, SCCU also takes external exposure (*2) into consideration when deciding on acceptance levels.

(*1) Internal exposure: Exposures to radiation from food intake and breathing
(*2) External exposure: Exposures to radiation at the surface of the body
 

◆ Accurate Monitoring of over 70,000 Samples

SCCCU has monitored a total of more than 70,000 samples since the nuclear accident in Fukushima. This figure accounts for about 7% of the total samples monitored by local governments of Japan (950,000 samples as of December 9, 2014). SCCCU monitors more than 400 samples every week.

The detection threshold  for radioactive cesium has been set as in Table 2  since April 2013. All monitoring results are publicized on the SCCCU website .