The nation’s largest salt producer has said that it has sufficient stock to meet local demand, while local authorities said that programs are in place to regularly monitor food safety amid concern over the impact of Japan’s discharge of treated wastewater from its decomissioned Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.
Recent news reports said people in some cities were snatching up salt products in supermarkets, especially Taiyen Biotech Co’s (台鹽) “iodized high quality salt.” Reporters checked out several Carrefour and Pxmart stores and found that some outlets had run out of Taiyen salt, while store employees confirmed that people had been snatching up 1kg bags of salt.
When asked, customers told reporters that they were stocking up on salt to avoid buying or digesting “salt from Japan, which might have radioactive contamination.”
Photo: Tsai Cheng-min, Taipei Times
A popular belief that iodized salt can protect against radiation has also sparked salt buying sprees in South Korea and China in the past few days.
Executives at Taiyen, formerly a state-controlled enterprise known as Taiwan Salt Co, told reporters that all of the company’s products were produced before Japan on Thursday last week began releasing treated wastewater from the Fukishima plant into the sea.
The Atomic Energy Council said that programs are in place to continue monitoring radiation levels around Taiwan’s waters, and so far, testing results indicated that all radioactive indicators were within normal levels.
The council’s Institute of Nuclear Energy Research’s radiation laboratory has also been testing samples of food products for possible radiation contamination, but none have shown abnormal levels of iodine, cesium, strontium, tritium or other radioactive elements, government officials said.
Scientists at Tunghai University’s applied physics department have posted on social media to allay public concerns about radiation contamination.
Taiwan’s standard for water content in “high quality salt” is set at below 0.5 percent, and at below 3 percent for regular quality salt, while the WHO sets the limit for tritium in water at 10,000 becquerels per liter.
“As people are recommended to drink two liters of water each day, each person would have to consume 444kg of salt made from tritium-containing wastewater discharge from the Fukushima nuclear power plant to exceed the WHO’s limits,” the scientists wrote.
Taiyen also released a statement saying that it had distributed extra stocks of salt at the end of last month in anticipation of high demand during Ghost Month — which falls on Aug. 16 to Sept. 14 this year — so all major sales channels and retailers should have sufficient supply.
“Taiwan’s domestic demand for refined salt is about 100,000 tonnes each year. Our plant — Tung-Hsiao Electrodialysis Refined Salt Factory in Miaoli County — was the main production site and when it was still a state enterprise, had an annual capacity of 100,000 tonnes,” it said.
“After the firm was privatized in 1995 and opened to market competition, annual output dropped to about 70,000 tonnes. However, it can boost production when needed. As such, salt supply remains normal and the public can be assured of quality products,” it said.
Additional reporting by Jason Pan
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