Understating the risks is just as irresponsible as overstating it.
The Mind of Dr. Pion: Don’t believe what the press is telling you!
There is no explicit by-line on this article, but the video contains an interview with BBC reporter Chris Hogg in Tokyo that repeats that a half life of 8 days means “that after 8 days the risk will have dissipated”.
The reporter is WRONG. Twice, because that is also not what the officials said. His ignorance of basic physics, in this case a topic I always teach in a college general education class, led him to misinterpret what was actually said by a government spokesman and hence mislead the public.
North American west coast fisheries are in for it,
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/currents.jpg
Uncle Al drops messages in a bottle into the Pacific about 50 miles west of Point Conception, hundreds. “Dilution” is minor. The majority arrive in the Philippines regardless of date of drop or weather in-between. The big plop of Cs-137 from steam explosions plus core drainage of everything are coming. Go shopping for fish in 2012 with a radiation meter. Cesium segregates like potassium. Human excretion cycle of about 20 days.
(If you will be crossing the Drake Passage to Antarctica during a February, kindly contact Uncle Al six or more months prior – bottle drop!)