Representative to Japan Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) wrote a post on his Facebook page on Saturday, in which he said that trace quantities of radioactive elements are actually good for one’s health.
He gave as examples the hot springs in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投) and the Tamagawa hot spring in Japan’s Akita Prefecture, which are the only places on Earth known to have a special kind of rock called hokutolite. Hokutolite, which is named after the Japanese pronunciation of the name “Beitou,” contains traces of radium, and Hsieh said that research shows this rock to be beneficial for one’s health.
Interestingly, some Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) politicians had a knee-jerk reaction to Hsieh’s post about the quality of these hot springs.
They interpreted his post as supporting Japan’s release into the sea of water containing tritium from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, which was shut down after an accident in March 2011.
Some critics suggested that if Hsieh thinks there is nothing wrong with the tritiated water from Fukushima, maybe he would like to go ahead and drink it every day.
However, these KMT politicians have made two kinds of mistakes, namely word substitution and self-contradiction.
Firstly, Hsieh’s post was about hot springs and made no mention of Fukushima at all, yet his critics are determined to conflate these two issues. This is a very unscientific attitude. In addition to not being conducive to any discussion, such an attitude could be interpreted as deliberately misleading.
Secondly, according to the KMT’s logic, anyone who thinks that there is nothing wrong with something should have to prove it by touching that thing every day.
If so, why is no KMT politician willing to live next door to a nuclear power station? Why does New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) support nuclear power now that he is campaigning as the KMT’s prospective presidential candidate, whereas when campaigning for the New Taipei City mayoral election, he said he would not allow nuclear waste from the city’s two nuclear power stations to be stored within the city?
Actually, in both cases — hot springs on the one hand and tritiated water from Fukushima on the other — there are scientific instruments that can check whether the water quality meets international standards and what effect the waters might have on the human body.
Unfortunately, given an opportunity to teach the public a thing or two about science, these KMT politicians prefer to vilify a particular person based on their own prejudices.
Huang Wei-ping works in public service.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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