Fears of radiation are threatening Japan's export-led economy.
As Japan struggles to contain radiation leaking from crippled nuclear reactors, many countries, including China, Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand have already started to test food imported from Japan for radiation, and the European Union has recommended that its member countries do so. However, the risk is low to Americans because Japan accounts for only 4 percent of American food imports. And even less of that is food with the highest risk of contamination.
Far greater damage could occur if Japanese automobiles or electronics get contaminated with radiation, or if fear spreads among consumers that they could get exposed to radiation sitting in a Prius or playing a DVD. However, given the nature of the manufacturing industries in Japan, there is little danger of contamination reaching harmful levels, the experts said. For one, most manufacturing in Japan happens far from the nuclear plant (and many of the cars and electronics from Japanese companies are actually made outside Japan). Moreover, manufacturing is usually done indoors. Most products were in packages and the radioactive particles would not damage the product inside. If a product is known to have deposited particles they can be washed off, or a contaminated box opened by someone wearing gloves and thrown away.
4 comments:
This earth quake and the following disaster indeed hurts the Japanese economy. First of all, Japan has to spend tons of money to recover and rebuild the area that has been hit. Second, as the article addressed, nearby countries will cut imports from Japan due to the nuclear accident. All those, hurt Japanese economy, and in long-term, the destruction will continue.
I never thought of radiation affecting Japan's exports due to countries' fear of radiation risk. The way this looks like, Japan will have a difficult decade of recovering from its devastation of the earthquake & the tsunami and its economy as the whole. At least Japan is accustomed to importing more food than its exportation of food, otherwise, vice versa, it would be an extreme challenge.
Just two days ago, there was a report saying that the water supply in Tokyo contains a small amount of radiation. Clearly, the nuclear plants incident affect a greater area than just the 20-km radius.
Also, a lot of neighboring countries such as Taiwan has found the food imported from Japan being contaminated with radiation. It is for sure that Japan's export will be damaged badly.
This is actually very interesting because it is an issue that didn't come to mind when I first heard about what happened in Japan. This puts Japan in a very tough position because it will not only have large expenses in order to rebuild what has been destroyed but will also hurt its exports because other countries' are now concerned that imports from Japan could be contaminated.
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