Radioactive water crisis triggers panic buying of bottled water in Japan
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The Tokyo metropolitan government on Thursday began dishing out some 240,000, half-liter bottles of water to families with infants, with a three-bottle limit per-infant being applied by the government.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference that the government will ask makers to increase their output of bottled water, whilst hinting that the government may call for emergency imports of bottled water to deal with the rise in demand and people hoarding large supplies.
Edano, Japan's top government spokesperson, on Thursday said that the levels of radioactive iodine found in Tokyo's water supply on Thursday were not harmful to the health of humans if ingested and called for the public, particularly those without infants, to stop panic-buying and draining the nation's dwindling supplies.
As fear of radioactive contamination has spread following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami crippling a nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture, 240 km northeast of Tokyo, the government has also started monitoring soil, seawater and air around the plant to evaluate the pollution and its impact on agricultural and fishery products.
A number of countries including South Korea, Singapore and the U.S. have imposed tough restrictions on food imports from Japan, with some countries opting for wholesale bans on vegetables, fruit, milk and milk products having found levels of radiation in the produce that far exceed legal limits.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has banned imports of dairy products and vegetables from the vicinity of the troubled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant and Japan's National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations halted shipments of potentially contaminated produce in the region earlier in the week.
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