Public anxiety, trust, and the role of mediators in communicating risk of exposure to low dose radiation after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant explosion

Abstract

The explosion at the Fukushima Nuclear Plant highlighted serious social concerns about risk communications; the public found it difficult to take preventive actions based on scientific information of radioactive fallout. We investigated public perception of the risks from low dose radiation and the role of information providers through the Internet survey focusing on parents in four Japanese regional groups. Mothers felt more anxious than fathers in Fukushima but not in further groups, and that the furthest group felt the most ambiguous anxiety. Their anxiety derived from distrust of the government and uncertainty about scientific information, rather than the lack of knowledge although risk communication emphasized learning the scientific mechanism. The mediators should provide more information for individual decision-making of day-to-day risk management in regions with different levels of radiological contamination; key issues include improving parents’ perceived control to their lives and easing their tension of responsibility to children’s health.

Visual Representations of Radiation Risk and the Question of Public (Mis-)Trust in Post-Fukushima Japan

“…The Japanese government has therefore been criticized for a lack of political will to take on long-term responsibility and provide adequate compensation solutions for the victims [48]. As Tateno and Yokoyama [13] point out, regaining control over their own lives and taking back their responsibility for the health of their children are essential elements for parents in coming to terms with the catastrophe. This is independent of the question of whether families with children actually intend to return to that area.…”

“…In addition to the inability to act and a lack of determination in the various agencies at the time of the catastrophic events, this is a central cause of the mistrust that has become widespread among the victims [9,13,68]. The absence of up-to-date data immediately after the earthquake and tsunami is, of course, due in part to the destruction of monitoring stations, but it is also due to a weak crisis management inherent in the system and a flawed communication of radiation risk.…”

“…In doing so, individuals intuitively relate certain sources of risk to potential outcomes such as radiation damage, cause-and-effect chains or dangerous situations that they have already experienced. This individual risk assessment depends primarily on qualitative characteristics [3,11,12] ( [13], pp. [2][3][4].…”

Lessons From the International Comparison of Contaminated Land Policies With Risk Governance in Japan, the Netherlands, and the Uk

“…From the opinions of citizens on what should be prioritized in actions in the future by local authorities, prefecture, and central government had highlighted the highest concerns on the disclosure of accurate information at 68.8 per cent, and the health management of citizens at 64.6 per cent to follow [5]. Another investigation on perceptions of Japanese parents by online survey at four groups of Tohoku, Kanto, and Kansai regions and Fukushima prefecture in March, 2012 summarized that reasons for feelings of anxiety to be mainly from distrust of the outlook and actions by the central government, and secondly from 'uncertainty about scientific data disseminated in the past about low dose radiation' as well as 'invisible risks' , i.e., spots with high dose of radiation or food produced without monitoring from radiation [6].…”

“…Furthermore, improvement of the quality of information and disclosing information completely was strongly requested for information providers [6].…”