Some Things We Can Do to Help Japan Earthquake/Tsunami/Nuclear Meltdown Victims

The ides of March have come and they haven't gone... Or something like that. In an already turbulent year that is seemingly overpopulated by natural and unnatural disasters: a hideous cyclone season in Australia, big earthquakes in Chile, Pakistan, Myanmar, New Zealand, the violent unrest in the Middle East, and now with the triple-header in Japan, March is proving its martial aspiration!

No other folks are as infrastructurally and sociologically prepared for the worst as the Japanese were, but there really is only so much you can do when Mother Nature throws a 9.0 earthquake towing a giant tsunami your way.... especially when 'your way' is home to a whole bunch of nuclear power plants! I hope they'll manage to somehow cool those exploding nuclear reactors down and stopping the radiation leak soon.... hopefully without having to make kamikazes out of their clean up crew.

I've been following the news via CNN, BBC, Deutsche Welle, Al Jazeera English, and a few other channels, of course, and I really admire the Japanese for how they are handling themselves through out this crisis. Clean up efforts are immediately underway and the quake/tsunami victims seem quite bent on what need to be done rather than to just wail for help and feel sorry for themselves like many other folks would tend to do. Folks in wiped out area who no longer have basic supplies are even standing in line at stores and shelters, orderly waiting their turn. Yes, one would hope that people always behave like that in the face of such devastating crisis, but I distinctly remember many other episodes in very recent memory elsewhere where this did not happen. So there... kudos to the Japanese people and wishing them a speedy recovery!

For those of us who dislike being a helpless spectator to such a scale of misfortune, though, we can help by donating to legitimate relief organizations like these:

American Red Cross - Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami Relief (www.redcross.org ): Text REDCROSS or 90999 to make $10 donation by text message.
Asia Foundation (http://give2asia.org/japantsunami-2011):
Doctors Without Borders (www.doctorswithoutborders.org):
Global Giving (www.globalgiving.org): Text JAPAN or 50555 to donate $10
International Medical Corps (www.internationalmedicalcorps.org): Text MED or 80888 to donate $10
Mercy Corps (www.mercycorps.org/donate/japan):
Salvation Army (donate.salvationarmyusa.org): Toll free: 800-SAL-ARMY, Text QUAKE or 80888 to donate $10.
Save the Children: Emergency Relief for Japan Quake (www.savethechildren.org/japanquake): Toll free: 800-728-3843, Text JAPAN or 20222 to donate.
World Vision (www.worldvision.org): Toll Free: 888-56-CHILD Text 4JAPAN to 20222 to donate $10

We, especially those of us Americans living on the US West Coast, can also refrain from worsening the situation by stop depleting the supply of potassium iodide (KI) by buying it up. These pills aren't magic bullets against radiation sickness. They only protect the thyroid gland from absorbing radioactive iodine (and radioactive iodine isn't the only ionizing radioactive thing coming out of those nuclear reactors). If you aren't in the northeastern part of Japan or in the ocean just to the east of it, you aren't at immediate need to protect yourselves from harmful radiation. Those people who do live in those areas are.... and your buying up the supply of KI is NOT helping them at all. Aside from being only effective for 24 hrs at a time (and too much of the thing can also cause toxicity), KI itself comes with its own set of side effects like intestinal upset, (possibly severe) allergic reactions, rashes, and inflammation of the salivary glands. Taking KI when you aren't being exposed to harmful amount of radiation doesn't make any good sense at all.