Article: Tokyo newspaper issued by 2017/01/07

Investigation on soil: A step away from completing 3000 samples of soil that has been contaminated by the nuclear power station’s accident. Civilians measuring radiation in 17 prefectures in East Japan.

Citizens’ radiation measuring station collectively created website “Minna no Data Site”. It gathers results of foods and soil samples’ radioactive contamination by TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power stations’ accident. The operators of the website are now in the process of publishing a booklet of conclusion of the soil project that they have been carrying out for 2 years. They have measured more than 2,500 soil samples from 17 prefectures of North-East Japan except for Hokkaido. They will complete the project after they measure 500 additional samples.

Minna no Data Site started in October, 2014. There are 33 citizens’ radiation measuring stations around Japan. With the new map coming by the project, viewers can look up areas, dates when the sample was measured and cesium contamination levels of soil samples. On the website, they can also search more than 13,000 foods samples depends on harvested and purchased areas, measured dates and cesium contamination levels. They have covered the expenses of measuring and operation of the organization by funding and donations.

One of the committee members Kiyumi Oyama (52 years old) said “we are one step away from reaching the goal of measuring 3000 soil samples”. They are lacking soil samples especially from Kanagawa, Tochigi and Gunma prefectures. They need 500 more samples from those regions.

For this project, they did crowdfunding campaign to raise ¥2,000,000 on the website called “moonshot” until last January. “We would like to publish the booklet by September” said Ms.Oyama. The booklet will include map that shows radioactive contamination levels in soil as well as analysis by the operator of the measurement.

The results of food samples are going to take more time to be summarized since they will compare it with the analysis of soil contamination situation. “We would like to ask you to rend us a hand to our project that make the invisible radiation visible” said Ms. Oyama. More details of the project can be found on the website of “Minna no Data Site” or “moonshot”.