China has promised to crack down on shops that are taking advantage of Japan’s nuclear crisis by overcharging customers panic-buying salt in the mistaken belief it will protect against radiation.
The giant March 11 earthquake and tsunami on Japan’s east coast left the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant leaking radiation, fueling a run in China on iodized salt, despite government reassurances the country is not in danger.
“A number of unscrupulous retailers have been punished for putting up their prices on table salt,” the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said on Friday. Fines have been dished out in at least eight Chinese provinces, the commission said. In Shaanxi Province, a supermarket was fined 50,000 yuan (US$7,600) for hiking the price of a 400g pack of salt from one to 2.5 yuan while a wholesaler in Jilin Province was prosecuted for raising prices from 1.3 yuan to 7 yuan.
On Thursday, Beijing issued a public call for calm after shoppers flooded supermarkets to buy salt in the belief that the iodine it contains can ward off the effects of radioactivity.
The NDRC, the country’s top economic planner, issued a notice assuring the public that China had ample salt stocks.
It urged shoppers to “consume rationally, buy reasonably, and don’t believe or spread rumors.”
The government has repeatedly said that China itself faces no imminent threat of radiation contamination from the Fukushima plant, 1,000km east of Jilin.
However, the proximity has fueled rumors spread across the Internet and via text messages that China was facing its own catastrophe.
The Shanghai Public Security Bureau announced yesterday that two people who had spread rumors via social networks that China’s economic hub had been hit by a radioactive cloud had been sentenced to unspecified “administrative penalties.”
Iodine, which is found in most salt in China as part of a national policy to prevent iodine deficiency disorders, helps to protect a person’s thyroid and glandular system from radiation damage if exposed.
However, large amounts of normal table salt would need to be ingested to have any impact on radiation.
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