TOKYO, Japan - March 20, 2011 - At a bustling Tokyo supermarket Sunday, wary shoppers avoided one particular bin of spinach.
The produce came from Ibaraki prefecture in the northeast, where radiation was found in spinach grown up to 75 miles from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. Another bin of spinach - labeled as being from Chiba Prefecture, west of Tokyo - was sold out.
“It’s a little hard to say this, but I won’t buy vegetables from Fukushima and that area,” said shopper Yukihiro Sato, 75.
From corner stores to Tokyo’s vast Tsukiji fish market, Japanese shoppers picked groceries with care Sunday after the discovery of contamination in spinach and milk fanned fears about the safety of this crowded country’s food supply. Trace amounts of radioactive iodine also were found in tap water in Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan.
The anxiety added to the spreading impact of the unfolding nuclear crisis triggered when the March 11 tsunami battered the Fukushima complex, wrecking its cooling system and leading to the release of radioactive material.
On Sunday, the government banned shipments of milk from one area and spinach from another and said it found contamination on two more vegetables - canola and chrysanthemum greens - and in three more prefectures. The Health Ministry also advised a village in Fukushima Prefecture not to drink tap water because of radioactive iodine in its supply. It stressed, however, that the amounts remained minuscule and posed no health threat.
