Tokyo:
The Japanese authorities are considering a plan to import bottled water from overseas, a government official said Thursday morning, a day after spreading contamination from a crippled nuclear plant led to a panicked rush to buy water in Tokyo.
Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, indicated at a news conference that importing water was among the options under discussion. This followed the disclosure on Wednesday by the Japanese authorities that radioactive iodine had been detected in Tokyo's water supply, prompting a warning that infants in Tokyo and surrounding areas should not be given tap water to drink.
On Thursday, the authorities began the daunting task of distributing bottled water to the families of an estimated 80,000 infants, defined as children under 1 year old.
Mr. Edano said that radiation had also been found in tests of water supplies for two of Tokyo's neighboring prefectures, Chiba and Saitama, adding to the anxiety about public safety posed by Japan's unfolding nuclear crisis. The levels in both prefectures were above maximum recommended limits for infants, but still below levels considered dangerous to adults.
Mr. Edano said the recommendation that infants not drink the tap water were based on "very conservative" standards. He added, "I would like to ask you to respond calmly."
In addition, officials of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said Thursday that the No. 1 and No. 4 units of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station were giving off white smoke, but that it was not interrupting the work of trying to repair the facilities, which were damaged by the earthquake and tsunami on March 11.
Mr. Edano said three workers had been injured just after noon at Unit No. 3, suffering radiation burns on their legs, while dragging an electrical cable through contaminated water. They were exposed to more than 170 millisieverts of radiation, he said, and two were taken to Fukushima Medical University Hospital and were expected to be transferred to the National Institute of Radiological Science in Chiba City, east of Tokyo.
He did not elaborate on the status of the third worker but Hiro Hasegawa, a Tokyo Electric Power Company spokesman, said the third man had not been hospitalized, but that he could not comment further.
The three were employed by a subcontractor of Tokyo Electric Power, the operator of the complex, Mr. Edano said, and were trying to connect a cable to an injection pump in the basement of the turbine building next to the No. 3 reactor.
The workers were burned as contaminated water poured over the tops of their low boots, soaking their feet and ankles, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported, citing Tokyo Electric Power sources.
Asked if the workers had suffered beta ray burns, Sakae Muto, a vice president of Tokyo Electric Power, said that it was possible.
In a positive development, an official of Tokyo Electric Power said workers had managed to restore lighting in the central control room of the No. 1 unit, an important step toward restarting the reactor's cooling system. The temperature in the reactor pressure vessel has been showing a worrisome increase, and Mr. Edano said that efforts were being focused on resolving the problem.
In a televised news conference on Wednesday, Ei Yoshida, head of water purification for the Tokyo water department, said that iodine 131 had been detected in water samples at a level of 210 becquerels per liter, about a quart. The recommended limit for infants is 100 becquerels per liter. For adults, the recommended limit is 300 becquerels. (The unit is named for Henri Becquerel, one of the discoverers of radioactivity.)
On Thursday afternoon, the Tokyo city authorities said that water samples from the Kanamachi water purification facility in the morning had shown the level of iodine 131 falling to 79 becquerels, below the maximum for infants. "Continued monitoring of the situation is essential," the officials said.
In fact, the limits recommended by the Japanese government appeared to be much lower than those of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Japan says older children and adults should get no more than 300 becquerels per liter while the I.A.E.A. recommends a limit of 3,000 becquerels. Greg Webb, an I.A.E.A. spokesman in Vienna, said he could not immediately provide his agency's recommendation for infants.
But Terrence Thompson, a World Health Organization official, said in an e-mail that the "Japanese guidelines are more conservative and more protective of human health, being an order of magnitude lower."
But the initial announcement on Wednesday had already prompted a run on bottled water at stores in Tokyo and a pledge from the authorities to distribute bottled water to families with infants. Prime Minister Naoto Kan said earlier Wednesday that the public should avoid additional farm produce from areas near the stricken plant, according to the Japanese news media.
The Health Ministry said that it was unlikely that there would be negative consequences for infants who were given the water, but that it should be avoided if possible and not be used to make infant formula. There was some confusion about the public health advice, with experts saying it should also apply to pregnant women, since they and fetuses were vulnerable.
The Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology released a statement on Thursday saying that at the 210-becquerel level found on Wednesday, a pregnant woman would be receiving less than one-thirtieth of the dangerous dose.
"It's unfortunate, but the radiation is clearly being carried on the air from the Fukushima plant," Mr. Edano said Wednesday. "Because it's raining, it's possible that a lot of places will be affected. Even if people consume the water a few times, there should be no long-term ill effects."
There has been frequent rain in recent days, and the watershed for Tokyo's water lies almost entirely north and northeast of the city. The nuclear plant is about 140 miles to the north.
But it was not entirely clear why the levels of iodine were so high, said a senior Western nuclear executive, noting that the prevailing breezes seemed to be pushing radiation out to sea. "The contamination levels are well beyond what you'd expect from what is in the public domain," said the executive, who insisted on anonymity and has broad contacts in Japan.
It was possible that the levels were an indirect indication that the problems at the plant were deeper than had been publicly acknowledged.
The daily Asahi Shimbun cited the Health Ministry as saying that drinking the water would hurt neither a pregnant woman nor her fetus, and that it was safe for bathing and other everyday activities.
But experts say that pregnant women, nursing mothers and fetuses, as well as children, face the greatest danger from radioactive iodine, which is taken in by the thyroid gland and can cause thyroid cancer. Children are at much higher risk than adults because they are growing, and their thyroid glands are more active and in need of iodine. In addition, the gland is smaller in children than in adults, so a given amount of iodine 131 will deliver a higher dose of radiation to a child's thyroid and potentially do more harm.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, if an adult and a child ingest the same amount of radioactive iodine the thyroid dose will be 16 times higher to a newborn than to an adult; for a child under 1 year old, eight times the adult dose; for a 5-year-old, four times the adult dose.
Pregnant women also take up more iodine 131 in the thyroid, especially in the first trimester. The iodine crosses the placenta and reaches the fetus, and the fetal thyroid takes up more iodine as pregnancy progresses. During the first week after birth a baby's thyroid activity increases up to fourfold and stays at that level for a few days, so newborns are especially vulnerable. Women who are breast-feeding will secrete about a quarter of the iodine they ingest into their milk.
Potassium iodide can protect the thyroid by saturating it with normal iodine. People in Japan have been advised to take it. Scientists say that if it is in short supply and must be rationed, the pills should go first to pregnant women and children.
The 1986 accident at Chernobyl caused an epidemic of thyroid cancer -- 6,000 cases so far -- in people who were exposed as children. The risk in that group has not decreased over time, and many more cases are expected. The culprit was milk produced by cows that had grazed on grass heavily carpeted by fallout. The epidemic could probably have been prevented if people in the region had been told not to drink milk and if they had been given potassium iodide.
The warning Wednesday applied to Tokyo's 23 wards, as well as to the towns of Mitaka, Tama, Musashino, Machida and Inagi to the west. At a Lawson convenience store in the Tsukiji neighborhood of central Tokyo, the shelves were about half-stocked with water. A clerk said he had restocked them just an hour before.
"People came in and cleared us out in the first hour after the announcement," he said, saying he did not want to be identified because he did not want to anger his boss. "They were taking 20 or 30 bottles at a time."
Outside the store a man struggling to load more than 30 half-liter bottles on his bicycle said he had bought the water for his wife, who is seven months pregnant.
"Tap water is O.K. for me," he said, asking that he be identified only by his family name, Takahashi. "But all they said was that babies shouldn't drink it. They haven't said anything about what pregnant women should do."
"We're going to stay in Tokyo for now," Mr. Takahashi, 31, said, "unless the reactor problem gets worse."
Around the corner, at an AM/PM convenience store, the bottled water section was bare except for nine half-liter bottles of sparkling lemon-flavored water.
With water disappearing from stores, the city government planned to distribute 240,000 bottles of water to families with children younger than 1 year, the broadcaster NHK reported. The Adachi ward of north Tokyo sent an e-mail to residents saying those families that qualified could come to their local general health center to pick up three bottles for each infant -- each bottle containing 550 milliliters, or a little more than half a quart.
Outside Tokyo, the government said it had found radioactive materials exceeding legal limits in 11 vegetables in Fukushima Prefecture, the Kyodo news agency reported. Shipments of the affected vegetables from there ended on Monday. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Kan also suspended shipments of raw milk and parsley from neighboring Ibaraki Prefecture, Kyodo reported.
The United States Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday that it would prohibit imports of dairy goods and produce from the affected region. Hong Kong also banned food and milk imports from the area. Canada on Wednesday imposed stricter controls on milk products, fruits and vegetables, and Australia on Thursday imposed new restrictions on food products including seaweed and seafood.
Mr. Kan's office said Wednesday that rebuilding after the 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami would cost up to $309 billion. The World Bank, citing private estimates, said on Monday that the figure could reach $235 billion.
The economic cost of the disaster has hit the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which operates the crippled nuclear plant and is in negotiations with its bankers for loans of as much as $24 billion, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation who asked not to be identified.
The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that the official death toll from the disaster had been raised to more than 9,500, with more than 16,000 people missing, although officials said there could be overlap between the figures.
Meanwhile, a magnitude 6.0 quake shook Fukushima Prefecture in the morning, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency, followed by a magnitude 5.8 tremor about 20 minutes later.