The Atomic Energy Council (AEC) yesterday announced plans to lower the minimum level of radiation exposure for former residents of radioactive buildings to receive free medical examinations, a measure that is expected to benefit an additional 3,000 people.
The council plans to lower the requirement from 5 millisieverts to 1 millisievert a year, it said at a meeting of the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee to review the council’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year.
Lawmakers said that current requirements are too high compared with international standards, with Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wu Kun-yuh (吳焜裕) citing the International Commission on Radiological Protection, which has lowered the annual dose limit for individuals from 5 millisieverts to 1 millisievert.
For buildings, the commission has set a limit of 1 millisievert, Wu added.
Although it has been more than 20 years, people who had lived in these houses still need medical care, Wu said.
Wu was referring to the discovery in the 1990s that more than 180 buildings housing more than 1,600 apartments that were built between 1982 and 1984 contained radioactive steel.
Wu and other lawmakers called on the council to review current regulations and propose a plan within six months.
The council said it would complete the legal procedures for the regulatory change within a year and begin providing free medical examinations to people who have been exposed to more than 1 millisievert of radiation a year by 2019 at the earliest.
In 1999, the council began providing free medical examinations and disease prevention services to residents of buildings exposed to more than 5 millisieverts of radiation a year.
In 2013, the Taipei City Government became the first to pass a self-government ordinance allowing residents exposed to more than 1 millisievert of radiation per year to receive free medical examinations and consolation money.
The council said it spends a total of about NT$6.7 million (US$223,281), or NT$9,000 per person, per year on medical examinations and other fees for people exposed to 5 millisieverts of radiation.
About 3,000 people in Taiwan have been exposed to radiation levels of between 1 and 5 millisieverts a year, it said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater