Yellow Rain Over Tokyo - Disinformation? Radioactive Fallout or Routine Sand From China?

Reports of yellow rain in Tokyo have got a lot of people thinking this is necessarily like the yellow rain observed after Chernobyl.

Firstly, here's the story of what happened after Chernobyl:

"
Remembering Chernobyl

Thinking back to 20 years ago, it’s the splashing in yellow rainwater that Antonina Sergieff vividly recalls.

The third-year graduate student didn’t know it then, but the unnatural color of those puddles in her hometown of Gomel, Belarus were due to radioactive particles spewing from a nuclear explosion 80 miles away.

Surrounded by ancient pine forests, the Chernobyl nuclear power station exploded during the early morning hours of April 26, 1986, setting off a raging radioactive fire that expelled over 190 tons of toxic material into the atmosphere.

Today, on the 20th anniversary of the incident, the Russian languages and literatures student can look back to the explosion and accept a childhood surrounded by radioactive contamination.

“We all jumped in the puddles with the yellow stuff. ... You don’t see (it in) the air, it doesn’t materialize. But when you see the yellow dust, you see radiation,” Sergieff said.

The accident was originally caused by a small testing error that resulted in a chain reaction in which highly pressurized steam literally blew the top off of a nuclear reactor.

The result was the release of 100 more times radiation than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, according to the United Nations issue brief on Chernobyl.

Among the unstable elements released were iodine-131, caesium-137, strontium-90 and plutonium-239. Scientists say that exposure to such elements, especially in such high doses, impairs critical cellular functions and damages DNA.

When these elements first reached Sergieff 20 years ago, they came in the form of yellow rain.

It was not long after that residents in her hometown knew it wasn’t simply “pollen” – which is what government officials assured them, she said.
"

http://dailybruin.detroitsoftworks.com/index.php/article/2006/04/remembering-chernobyl

This is the video that has sparked concern today:

"After two days of rain in Tokyo I woke up to a thick coating of this yellow stuff all over my car. What looks like a glare between the glass and the body of the car is actually pollen. My first thought was "ewe! Radioactive sludge from Fukushima." But no" - youtube user 'hooktrunk'



Now a commenter on this video raised the objection that yellow rain occurs often in Japan, because dust from China gets picked up and rains down on Japan, Korea and elsewhere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Dust

"Asian Dust (also yellow dust, yellow sand, yellow wind or China dust storms) is a seasonal meteorological phenomenon which affects much of East Asia sporadically during the springtime months. The dust originates in the deserts of Mongolia, northern China and Kazakhstan where high-speed surface winds and intense dust storms kick up dense clouds of fine, dry soil particles. These clouds are then carried eastward by prevailing winds and pass over China, North and South Korea, and Japan, as well as parts of the Russian Far East. Sometimes, the airborne particulates are carried much further, in significant concentrations which affect air quality as far east as the United States.

In the last decade or so, it has become a serious problem due to the increase of industrial pollutants contained in the dust and intensified desertification in China causing longer and more frequent occurrences, as well as in the last few decades when the Aral Sea of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan started drying up due to the diversion of the Amu River and Syr River following a Soviet agricultural program to irrigate Central Asian deserts, mainly for cotton plantations."



Chinese yellow sand hits Japan, S.Korea: officials (2008)
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jki0R_S3dtL7QkGEHwM-tnblCNXQ

http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/yellow-sand-phenomenon-seen-in-west-japan-in-rare-winter-occurrence (2009)

Hey, I'm not saying that it can't be radioactive fallout. The only way to know for sure is to get a geiger counter over that "pollen"! Either way, 'Asian dust' rain over Japan is a hazard, albeit a routine hazard, since it often carries pollutants from Chinese industry.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying eat it!

But it doesn't necessarily mean the worst case scenario i.e. Chernobyl style fallout.

Ask Mr. Geiger before hitting the panic button, that's all I'm saying.