Radioactivity standards
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Nov. 25 announced that Uni-President Enterprises Corp’s dietary supplement Yu-bei “eye and brain protection capsules” has been found to contain cesium-137 exceeding four times the legal limit.
The capsules are a health supplement for the eyes. Each bottle contains 60 capsules.
Although the product has passed tests conducted by the FDA, one of its ingredients, Extracyan — a cateco-anthocyanidins standardized extract of bilberry fruit — has been found to contain radioactive cesium-137 that produced 477 becquerels per kilogram (Bq/kg).
The ingredient was imported from France. According to EU standards, 1,200Bq/kg is perfectly safe. Likewise, it would not have been found illegal in the US. However, in Taiwan and Japan, due to their governments’ ridiculously high standards, the product cannot be sold.
The unit used to measure radioactivity is the becquerel, which is also the unit used to set the safety limits for radiation levels in food. One can convert becquerel to sievert, which is used to measure the health effects of radiation doses on the human body. Every 1,000Bq amounts to 0.013 millisievert (mSv).
Keeping the EU radioactivity limit of 1,200Bq per kilogram in mind, let us consider the health effects of taking one Yu-bei capsule per day for an entire year.
Assuming that one capsule weighs 10g, or 0.01kg, 1,200 multiplied by 365 and then multiplied by 0.01 equals 4,380Bq. This means doses of less than 0.06 sievert, and the FDA’s tests have found 477Bq/kg in Extracyan, only 0.025mSv.
What does 0.025mSv mean? Taking one flight in an airplane would result in exposure to radioactivity that is four times that amount.
Average levels of radioactivity in nature are 2mSv to 3mSv, while in Sweden the average is 5mSv to 6mSv. Exposure to radioactivity during one flight is estimated to be between 0.1mSv and 0.21mSv, while pilots are exposed to several dozen mSv per year.
In Guarapari, a famous tourist destination near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the natural radiation levels are about 10mSv per year, but local residents love to spend time on the beach and enjoy the beautiful scenery.
Ten mSv is even higher than the radiation levels detected in the town of Iitate, Fukushima Prefecture, which was entirely evacuated following the meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in 2011.
The government’s standards for radioactivity in food are a joke, as they are not in line with international standards.
Equally laughable is the government’s ban on food products imported from areas in Japan affected by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
The Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries on Nov. 21 announced that Saudi Arabia had lifted a rule on Japanese food imports to the country that required Japanese exporters to provide documents showing the radiation levels of food products from Fukushima, Miyagi, Tokyo and nine other prefectures.
Those documents are now no longer required.
For how long must Taiwan remain an international laughingstock for refusing to change its standards for radioactivity in food?
Liu Chen-chien
Taipei
In an article published in Newsweek on Monday last week, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged China to retake territories it lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. “If it is really for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t China take back Russia?” Lai asked, referring to territories lost in 1858 and 1860. The territories once made up the two flanks of northern Manchuria. Once ceded to Russia, they became part of the Russian far east. Claims since then have been made that China and Russia settled the disputes in the 1990s through the 2000s and that “China
Trips to the Kenting Peninsula in Pingtung County have dredged up a lot of public debate and furor, with many complaints about how expensive and unreasonable lodging is. Some people even call it a tourist “butchering ground.” Many local business owners stake claims to beach areas by setting up parasols and driving away people who do not rent them. The managing authority for the area — Kenting National Park — has long ignored the issue. Ultimately, this has affected the willingness of domestic travelers to go there, causing tourist numbers to plummet. In 2008, Taiwan opened the door to Chinese tourists and in
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) arrest is a significant development. He could have become president or vice president on a shared TPP-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) ticket and could have stood again in 2028. If he is found guilty, there would be little chance of that, but what of his party? What about the third force in Taiwanese politics? What does this mean for the disenfranchised young people who he attracted, and what does it mean for his ambitious and ideologically fickle right-hand man, TPP caucus leader Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌)? Ko and Huang have been appealing to that
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
RSS