ESSEX has been showered with low-level radioactive iodine 6,000 miles from Japan's earthquake-stricken Fukushima nuclear power station, the Government's health protection agency said on Wednesday.

The agency has monitors only in Glasgow and Oxfordshire but its spokesman said: "Similar amounts, which are not at the levels to be a threat to human health, will have landed on Essex and everywhere else in the UK in more or less the same amounts."

Essex and Suffolk Water said they have "extremely accurate" monitoring equipment and there would be no effect on the water supply.

Matthew Pardoe at the health agency added: "Iodine 131 has a radioactive half life of eight days but the quantities measured here are well below anything harmful to humans and if things stay as they are we cannot see it being worse.

"If the Japanese plant breaks down further then there could be a significant change but that does not appear to be the case so far."