The World Health Organization (WHO) described as "serious" readings in spinach found some distance away from Japan's Fukushima nuclear reactor, and said Japan needed to act quickly and ban food sales from those areas if food there has excessive levels of radiation, said an article in the Financial Times (FT) on March 21.

The international agency's comments came after it began a detailed review of the implications of relatively high levels of radioactive contamination identified in agricultural produce in Japan following damage to the plant. It added that experts were examining the data to assess against current guidelines.

"Repeated consumption of certain products is going to intensify risks, as opposed to radiation in the air that happens once and then the first time it rains there's no longer radiation in the air," and "they're going to have to make some decisions quickly in Japan to shut down and stop food being used from zones which they feel might be affected," a WHO spokesperson is quoted as saying in the article.

On the other hand, although experts from WHO said the readings in spinach were above international thresholds and a cause for scrutiny, they also admitted that would not necessarily have serious health consequences, according to the article.

While milk or other food consumed rapidly would bring a higher risk of radioactivity, washing and any delays in consumption of food, such as storage, would reduce the harm. Indeed, spinach and other leafy vegetables have relatively high radioactivity compared with other produce, largely because of their greater surface area. But if they were stored, washed or were still growing and not picked yet, the risks would be substantially lower, the article said.