Food tested by Seoul satisfies safety standards despite Fukushima water release

Social Affairs

Food tested by Seoul satisfies safety standards despite Fukushima water release

Published: 02 Sep. 2024, 15:20

CHO JUNG-WOO
cho.jungwoo1@joongang.co.kr

In an undated photo released by the Seoul Metropolitan Government on Monday, city government officials collect seafood samples and conduct safety inspections at a fish market in Seoul. [SEOUL METROPOLITAN GOVERNMENT]

The Seoul Metropolitan Government on Monday announced that all 26,000 food products tested in the capital over the past year were deemed safe following expanded safety inspections on seafood and agricultural products.

The intensified tests came as Japan began releasing treated wastewater from its crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the Pacific in August last year.

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During the yearlong inspection from Aug. 24 last year, the city tested 26,772 food samples — an 18-fold increase from the 1,484 tests conducted in 2022. All test results satisfied safety standards.

Over 90 percent of the samples tested were seafood, while the remaining samples included processed products, agricultural goods and meat and poultry.

Seoul has been inspecting food products sold at wholesale fishery markets and traditional markets since 2012, following the nuclear power plant meltdown in Fukushima caused by a tsunami and earthquake in March 2011. District offices conduct such tests at least three times a week in traditional markets to check radioactivity levels.

The city government also plans to conduct an additional 5,000 inspections starting in September.

Seoul residents can request tests on suspicious food samples separately through the city government’s website. This year, the city government inspected 208 cases filed by the public. A total of 1,471 requests have been filed since 2012.

Between Aug. 8 and Aug. 25, Japan’s Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) completed its eighth round of treated radioactive water releases from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant. During this period, some 7,800 tons of radioactive water — generated during the process of cooling the reactors after the 2011 meltdown — was discharged into the Pacific, bringing the accumulative amount of treated wastewater released since last year to around 62,600 tons.

According to a report by Japan’s Asahi Shimbun, no abnormalities have been detected regarding the concentration of radioactive substances in seawater and fish around the plant since Tepco began discharging the treated wastewater in August last year.

The Korean government also stressed last month that none of the 49,600 tests conducted on samples collected from the country's waters in the past year exceeded safety standards.

However, civic environmental groups in Seoul argued during a protest held last month that “dumping the wastewater” into the ocean itself constitutes a serious threat to human life and the environment. They further demanded that the Japanese government release detailed reports on the radioactivity level at the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant, citing data from Japan’s Environment Ministry indicating that the concentration of tritium — a radioactive form of hydrogen — rose tenfold in the area where the radioactive water was released after two months of discharge.

BY CHO JUNG-WOO [cho.jungwoo1@joongang.co.kr]