Japanese used-car imports face ban

SOME second-hand vehicles being imported from Japan might be contaminated with radioactive material released into the atmosphere when the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant was damaged by a tsunami in March last year.

Government has begun working on monitoring mechanisms to ensure vehicles imported into Zimbabwe are safe.

Transport, Communications and Infrastructure Development Minister Nicholas Goche yesterday told the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Transport, Communications and Infrastructure Development that a Zimbabwean resident in Japan had written to the Government notifying them of the possible contamination.

The Minister said this following an inquiry by Glen Norah legislator Mr Gift Dzirutwe who sought to know what the Government was doing to curb the importation of contaminated cars.

There are reports that some vehicles were coming from the affected region.

"The fear of radiation is there. There is a Zimbabwean who lives in Japan who wrote to us and the Ministry of Industry and Commerce that before the vehicles are imported from Japan, there be a mechanism to check on that," he said.


Minister Goche said the Zimbabwean resident had also promised to assist the Government in coming up with monitoring mechanisms and that permanent secretaries in the two ministries had since been instructed to deal with the matter.

"He has offered to work with us to ensure that vehicles imported to Zimbabwe are safe and the permanent secretaries are working to look at what mechanisms are there to ensure that they are safe. It's a serious issue and we have to be alert on that," Minister Goche said.

Most Japanese cars are imported into Zimbabwe through Durban, Beira and Dar-es -Salaam.

According to Engineer Calvin Chigariro of the Harare City Council, exposure to radioactive materials can cause cancer.

"Any living tissue in the human body can be damaged by ionising radiation that is caused by exposure to radioactive material.

"While the body may attempt to repair the damage, if the damage is widespread or severe, it can lead to the development of cancerous cells," he said. Eng Chigariro said a person can also suffer from acute radiation syndrome that occurs several months after exposure to ionising radiation.

"The symptoms depend on the amount of radiation exposure, but can cause vomiting and drop in blood count resulting in infections and bleeding," he said.

The earthquake and tsunami claimed 20 000 lives though no deaths have been directly attributed to the nuclear disaster at Fukushima.

The Fukushima nuclear disaster was the second largest nuclear disaster to occur after the Chernobyl power plant in the former Soviet Union in 1986.

The tsunami broke the reactors' connection to the power grid and affected supply of power to pumps that cool the reactors. This saw them overheating.

Three reactors experienced complete meltdown and several hydrogen explosions occurred, resulting in the release of radioactive material into the atmosphere.

Japanese officials initially assessed the accident as Level 4 on the International Nuclear Event Scale, but was successively raised to 5 and eventually to 7, the maximum scale value.

INES is a tool for promptly communicating to the public in consistent terms the safety significance of reported nuclear and radiological incidents and accidents.

The scale can be applied to any event associated with nuclear facilities, as well as the transport, storage and use of radioactive material and radiation sources.

Soon after the incident, the Japanese government banned exports of food grown in the area.