Awards: Two Nominations for Fukushima Fish Radiation Story

Congratulations to me! My story in Vancouver's Georgia Straight weekly on how the Fukushima nuclear disaster affected the Pacific fishery has gotten nominated for a Canadian Association of Journalists award for investigative reporting in the magazine category.

It was also nominated by the Western Magazine Awards for a prize in the environment category.

Thanks to Straight editors Charlie Smith and Martin Dunphy and publisher Dan McLeod for their unswerving support for investigative stories - one of Canada's last remaining bastions for this type of reporting.

Investigative Journalism: Fukushima Waste Being Stored at Playgrounds, Schools With Little Oversight

Here's a new one from the Fukushima file.

While Japan's government continues to struggle to deal with the Fukushima nuclear disaster, local communities are storing radioactive dirt, sludge and debris in playgrounds and other public places, according to this excellent Christian Science Monitor report.

In one city 150 miles north of Tokyo, groups of children played in a playground where hundreds of bags of the radioactive waste were stored a few feet underground in an unmarked, unfenced corner, the reporter discloses.

While government scientists assure that the risk of the radioactive isotopes in the waste seeping into the groundwater "quickly" is "low," there is no mention of an actual risk assessment or method used to calculate that risk.

And of course, local residents are flabbergasted. One found that at least 20 other such disposal sites in parks  and public spaces exist in his city alone. It's not clear if there's any monitoring of whether radioisotopes are leeching out, and officials even refuse to put up signs.

Across Fukushima prefecture, waste was being stored at 1,027 schools and 788 parks, according to the story, which says the sites are "scantily regulated."

Investigations: Texas Officials Covered up Radioactive Drinking Water

State officials in Texas covered up elevated levels of radioactivity in drinking water for years, even though it violated federal standards, according to this five-part investigation by KHOU-TV News. Even so-called "safe" levels of radiation in drinking water actually lead to cancer, the series reports.

That's also a common issue in Canada. There, the government's ceiling on radioactive material in drinking water is set at a level that leads to 511 lifetime cancers per million people - or 17,000 lifetime cancers for Canada's 33 million people, according to this story I did on the fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in The Georgia Straight.