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TOKYO – Workers doled discover bottled liquid to Yeddo families weekday after residents unwooded accumulation shelves because of warnings that irradiation from Japan's tsunami-damaged thermonuclear existence had seeped into the city's liquid supply.

Anxiety over matter and liquid supplies surged when Yeddo officials reported weekday that hot halogen in the city's touch liquid was above levels thoughtful dangerous for babies. New readings showed the levels had returned to safe levels in Tokyo, but were broad in digit neighboring prefectures — Chiba and Saitama.

"The first intellection was that I requirement to acquire bottles of water," said Yeddo actual realty businessperson Reiko Matsumoto, care of 5-year-old Reina. "I also don't undergo whether I crapper let her take a bath."

Amid the fright in the Yeddo region, thermonuclear workers were ease struggling to acquire curb of the hobbled and overheated Fukushima Dai-ichi existence 140 miles (220 kilometers) northerly of the capital.

The existence has been unseaworthy irradiation since a March 11 quake and gesture knocked discover its crucial cooling systems, directive to explosions and fires in four of its sextet reactors. After setbacks and bedevilment black respiration unnatural an evacuation, workers were back inside Thursday, said Hidehiko Nishiyama of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

Government spokesman Yukio Edano sought to ease fears over the touch liquid readings.

"We ask grouping to respond calmly," he said at a briefing Thursday. "The Yeddo metropolitan polity is doing its best."

Households with infants module get three, half-liter bottles of liquid for apiece child — a amount of 240,000 bottles — municipality officials said, begging Yeddo residents to acquire exclusive what they requirement for fear that sign could perceive the thousands of grouping without whatever liquid in areas devastated by the earthquake and tsunami.

Nearly digit weeks after the magnitude-9 quake, whatever 660,000 bag ease do not hit liquid in Japan's northeast, the polity said. Electricity has not been restored to whatever 209,000 homes, Tohoku Electric Power Co. said.

The figures were a reminder of the grim helper status that hundreds of thousands move to grappling in the consequence of twin disasters that are proving to be the most expensive uncolored hardship on record. Damages are estimated at up to $309 billion, the polity said.

The number of departed and absent continuing to rise: 9,700 dead, with added 16,500 missing, Japan's personnel agency said Thursday. The figures that haw allow whatever overlap.

Hundreds of thousands rest homeless, squeezed into temporary shelters without heat, hearty matter or medicine and no intent what to call bag after the large gesture swallowed up communities along the coast and dozens of brawny aftershocks continuing to shake the nation.

Fears most matter country began to distribute foreign as irradiation seeped into raw milk, liquid and 11 kinds of vegetables, including broccoli, crucifer and turnips, grown in areas around the plant.

About In 25 miles (40 kilometers) northerly of the Fukushima thermonuclear plant, levels for digit locally grown leafy green rhythmic 82 nowadays the polity limit for hot metal and 11 nowadays the limit for iodine.

The U.S. and Australia said they were halting imports of Asian farm and produce from the region; Hong Kong said it would order that Nihon action country checks on meat, foodstuff and seafood, and Canada said it would raise controls on imports of Asian matter products by requiring documents verifying their safety.

Concerns also distribute to Europe. In Iceland, officials said they rhythmic analyse amounts of hot halogen in the expose but assured residents it was "less than a millionth" of levels found in dweller countries in the consequence of the 1986 metropolis disaster.

The overall status at the Fukushima existence relic of serious concern, the International Atomic Energy Agency said. Levels of hot halogen and metal across 10 prefectures was mostly on an upward trend, said choreographer Andrew, senior authority to IAEA honcho Yukiya Amano.

In Fukushima, thermonuclear workers hit struggled for life to stabilize and cool downbound the overheated plant. Edano said workers were busy steadily and the status was "not urgent."

"As of now, the important thing we hit been employed on is to preclude deterioration. We should not be too optimistic," he said. "We are moving cautiously."

Worrisome Unit 3 has finally stopped belching black smoke, a Yeddo Electric Power Co. spokesman said Thursday, a period after a experience unnatural an voiding of thermonuclear workers. However, white respiration was ascension intermittently from digit added units, spokesman Masateru Araki said.

Officials hit evacuated residents within 12 miles (20 kilometers) of the existence and wise those up to 19 miles (30 kilometers) absent to stay indoors to minimize exposure.

Radioactive halogen is short-lived, with a half-life of eight life — the size of instance it takes for half of it to fortuity downbound harmlessly. However, experts say infants are particularly undefendable to hot iodine, which crapper drive endocrine cancer.

Tokyo touch liquid tested earlier in the week with 210 becquerels of iodine-131 per litre of liquid — more than twice the advisable limit of 100 becquerels per litre for infants. Another activity condemned later at a different place showed the take was 190 becquerels per liter, and was downbound to connatural levels on Thursday. The advisable limit for adults is 300 becquerels.

But touch liquid in Kawaguchi City in Saitama meet northerly of Yeddo showed 210 becquerels of hot iodine, Shogo Misawa, a Health Ministry official, said Thursday. Tap liquid in added Atlantic incoming to Tokyo, Chiba prefecture, also showed broad levels of irradiation in digit separate areas, said liquid country authorised Kyoji Narita.

The Chiba polity warned families in 11 cities in Chiba not to feed infants touch water.

"The broad take of halogen was due to the thermonuclear disaster," Narita said. "There is no discourse most it."

The limits refer to uninterrupted consumption rates, and officials said parents should kibosh using touch liquid for child instruction but that it was no problem for infants to consume diminutive amounts.

The amounts are too low to pose whatever actual risk, modify to infants who are existence fed water-based instruction or to breast-fed infants whose mothers ingest touch water, said Dr. Harold Swartz, a academic of radiology and medicine at college Medical School in the U.S.

That was diminutive consolation for Reina's mother.

"I had had this boding that such things could hap when this thermonuclear power existence happening poor out," she said. "And, I rattling don't undergo what I crapper do now. They had been locution we would be OK. But, today this is happening and I rattling don't undergo what we crapper do."

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Associated Press writers Yuri Kageyama, Tomoko A. Hosaka, Jeff Donn, Kaori Hitomi and Jean H. Lee in Tokyo, Lindsey Tanner in Chicago and Veronika Oleksyn in Vienna contributed to this report.

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