Issue |
Radioprotection
Volume 55, Number 4, October-December 2020
|
|
---|---|---|
Page(s) | 277 - 282 | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/radiopro/2020080 | |
Published online | 15 December 2020 |
Article
Review of health risks among decontamination workers after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Accident
1
Department of Surgery, Jyoban Hospital of Tokiwa Foundation,
Fukushima, Japan
2
Department of Radiation Health Management, Fukushima Medical University School of Medicine,
Fukushima, Japan
3
Research Center for Community Health, Minamisoma Municipal General Hospital,
54-6 Takamicho 2 chome, Haramachi,
Minamisoma,
Fukushima, Japan
4
Department of Breast Surgery, Jyoban Hospital of Tokiwa Foundation,
Iwaki,
Fukushima, Japan
* Corresponding author: toyoakisawano@gmail.com
Received:
22
October
2020
Accepted:
15
November
2020
In the radiation industry, occupational health is a significantly important issue. As the workers belong to a wide range of socioeconomic classes, the management of the health of the workers, especially in a lower socioeconomic status, such as migrant workers, is essential. After the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) accident, migrant decontamination workers were recruited to help clean up and mitigate the ionizing radiation in evacuation zone, in order to resume life. As this was the first attempt at such decontamination work after a nuclear accident, these workers were the first to experience these conditions. However, limited information is available on the health of the workers engaged in this work. This paper comprehensively reviews the existing health risks faced by the workers after the FDNPP accident to provide general health guidelines to mitigate the health risks of decontamination workers in future disasters. Following previous literature, the health risks were categorized by those associated with occupational hazards and those associated with the living environment. Not only a mitigation of the direct occupational hazards, such as radiation exposure, work-related infection and trauma during work, but also the management of lifestyle should be adequately supported for decontamination workers of future nuclear disasters.
Key words: occupational hazard / occupational health / non-communicable disease / socioeconomic status / radiation accident
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences 2021
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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