Tokyo running out of bottled water

PanARMENIAN.Net - Stores in Tokyo were running out of bottled water on Thursday, March 24, after radiation from a damaged nuclear complex briefly made tap water unsafe for babies, while more nations curbed imports of Japanese food.

Engineers are trying to stabilize a six-reactor nuclear plant in Fukushima, 250 km (150 miles) north of the capital, nearly two weeks after an earthquake and tsunami battered the plant and devastated northeast Japan, leaving nearly 26,000 people dead or missing.

Tokyo's 13 million residents were told not to give tap water to babies under 1 year old after contamination hit twice the safety level this week. But it dropped back to allowable amounts on Thursday, Reuters reports.

Despite government appeals against panic, supermarkets and stores sold out of bottled water. "Customers ask us for water. But there's nothing we can do," said Masayoshi Kasahara, a store clerk at a supermarket in a residential area of eastern Tokyo. "We are asking for more deliveries but we don't know when the next shipment will come."

Radiation above safety levels has also been found in milk and vegetables from Fukushima, where the stricken nuclear plant is located on the Pacific coast.

Singapore and Australia joined the United States and Hong Kong in restricting food and milk imports from the zone, while Canada became the latest of many nations to tighten screening after the world's worst atomic crisis since Chernobyl.

Radiation particles have been found as far away as Iceland, although Japan insists levels are not dangerous to adults.