Recent studies are beginning to show a high death toll from the melt-down of three nuclear plants in Fukushima prefecture, Japan.
Particularly notable is a study in which Dr Alfred Koerblein from Nuremburg, Germany, recently noticed and reported on a highly statistically significant drop of 10.1% in the numbers of live births in Fukushima Prefecture in December 2011, nine months after the accident. Radiation damage to the zygote from the high initial radiation spike following the nuclear accident can trigger early spontaneous abortions which in turn manifest as a drop of live births 9 months later.
"The decrease of live births in December 2011 is 10.1% and is highly statistically significant (P= 5.8 E-7)... The drop of live births is limited to December 2011, no appreciable deviation of live births is observed in the previous (November 2011) and the following month (January 2012) which supports the hypothesis that the birth rate is caused by an increase in spontaneous early abortions in March 2011."
The rest of Japan also saw more limited effects, a reduction in births of 3% not including the study area. With the study area included, the overall rate of reduction for the country was 4%. The overall number of missing births in the study region is 1,251; for Japan as a whole it is 3,572 (P= 0.0090). These are deaths that can be directly attributed to radiation emitted during and immediately after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster.
In another study, he also observed that "A significant 3-fold increase of infant mortality is found in Fukushima prefecture in May 2011 (O=9, E=3.1, P=0.0014)."
Interestingly, peaks in Japanese infant mortality data in May 2011 and December 2011, two and nine months after the nuclear disaster, parallel mortality peaks in the West German infant mortality data in June 1986 and February 1987 after the Chernobyl disaster on 26 April 1986.
A follow-up study observed a (statistically significant) 20% increase in the infant mortality rate in 2012, relative to the long-term trend in Fukushima Prefecture plus six surrounding prefectures, which he attributes to the consumption of radioactive food:
The fact that infant mortality peaks in May 2012, more than one year after the Fukushima accident, suggests that the increase is an effect of internal rather than external radiation exposure. In Germany, perinatal mortality peaks followed peaks of cesium burden in pregnant women with a time-lag of seven months. May 2012 minus seven month is October 2011, the end of the harvesting season. Thus, consumption of contaminated foodstuff during autumn 2011 could be an explanation for the excess of infant mortality in the Fukushima region in 2012."
This 20% increase in infant mortality in the study region contrasts with a 2% decrease in Japan as a whole during 2012.