Hazmat Event; Cesium found in Dairy Cows.

RSOE


On Thursday September 22 2011, The RSOE website reported that Dairy Cows have been discovered to be contaminated with Cesium, in the Prefecture of Iwate

High levels of radioactive cesium have been detected in Japanese dairy cattle. The Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported Thursday, that dairy cows at a farm in Iwate Prefecture, were found to be contaminated with cesium of, 541 becquerels per kilogram. The limit is 5-hundred bequerels. According to the paper, the prefectural government believes the contamination could be from cesium-tainted straw fed to the cattle. Although several cesium-tainted beef cows have been detected in Japan since the nuclear plant meltdown in Fukushima Prefecture began, this is the first time that cesium has been detected in dairy cattle.

This is a rather disturbing development for Japan, the country which has already been through much devastation. We can only hope this contamination does not spread any further into our food supplies. What are your opinions and thoughts on this latest development?

nice find.

now forget it. you must pretend you never seen this. if we all turn our backs on japan and ignore them the problem will just vanish. don't worry , the mainstream media already know this. there is still just a few pesky people posting very disturbing videos on youtube from japan. they'll give up soon enough and we can carry on as if it never happened.

nuclear fallout in japan? what nuclear fallout?

Was only a matter of time really... Those poor people have literally no where to go besides South or North and neither way is safe from the radiation...

reply to post by JohnySeagull


Thats how I feel as well, I keep wondering why our media has stopped reporting as much on the crisis going on in japan. It's sad, and the people in japan are in need of help- how exactaly I'm not quite sure, but they need it. It starts with recognition of the situation at hand. And thanks for your input

contaminated food supply was inevitable after that disaster. I fear that this is only the start, they will find more and more animals contaminated as the weeks go on. And of particular concern should be the seafood given the proximity of the nuclear plant to the ocean and the the fact that the Japanese diet is primarily seafood.

This is not a good situation, another concern is this just came out? It isn't likely this contamination just happened, those animals have been contaminated for a much longer period of time.

Anybody tested the Pineapples growing in Hawaii?

reply to post by bphi1908


there was contaminated food immediately after the disaster. It was found in cows very quickly. it contaminates milk very quick because it is a very quick turn around.

this new story would make me think that there is fresh contamination happening or the original contamination was so bad the whole place is fecked now.

reply to post by bphi1908


See, that's exactly what I was thinking. How long did it take them to realize they were contaminated? How much contaminated dairy product was sold (if any) before they realized the problem? Where do those dairy products go?

Does anyone know precisely the acceptable levels of cesium pre-3/11?

They have already raised the bar for "safe" once...

Originally posted by manicminxx
Does anyone know precisely the acceptable levels of cesium pre-3/11?

They have already raised the bar for "safe" once...

It varies by country.

This is an excellent resource talking about the contamination problem (see page 4 of the pdf file):

www.kantei.go.jp...

The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) established the provisional regulation for exposure to radio active cesium in food products as 500 Bq/kg. Examples of the similar values from other countries are 1,000 Bq/kg in Singapore and Hong Kong; 1,200 Bq/kg in the U.S.A.; 370 Bq/kg in the Republic of Korea and Taiwan.

They actually buy the contaminated beef so that there won't be an incentive to hide the fact it's contaminated when contamination is found. Apparently in Japan 500 Bq/kg been the limit for beef all along; you are probably thinking of the limit for the exposure of schoolchildren and adults to radiation to the same levels as nuclear workers that was changed, which was not a beef issue:

news.yahoo.com...

Following the accident, Japan raised the exposure limit for both adults and children from one to 20 millisieverts per year, matching the maximum exposure level for nuclear industry workers in many countries.

The move prompted outrage and parents in Fukushima had been calling on the government to lower limits at school, claiming that children face a higher risk from radiation-linked cancers and other diseases than adults.

Due to the outrage they have since lowered the limit for schoolchildren.

Japan on Friday lowered radiation exposure limits for children to below one millisievert per year while at school due to health concerns in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear crisis.

I take that to mean that the increased limit still applies to adults, and for that matter to kids while they are at home? Apparently the reduced (back to the original) limit only applies at school?

They have a limit for straw of 300 Bq/kg, but of course the cows can concentrate the contamination in what they eat so it's possible for the cow to get over 500 when eating straw that's limited to 300.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


I don't know if you personally would know the answer to this question, but here it is for anyone if they know : Why would they feed their cattle straw that is at the maximum level of radiation? Couldn't they have straw shipped in, or is that perhaps too expensive, or would it become contaminated once entering a certain area of japan?

reply to post by NerdGoddess

I can sort of answer that question.

If you read through the pdf document I linked to, it talks about how they compensate farmers if something is over the contamination level. They buy the contaminated beef, then destroy it (I'm not sure how they destroy it).

So if the cow measured 490 you can sell it for food, if it's 510 you sell it to be scrapped.

My educated guess answer is that the market for straw works similarly. If it's under the 300 limit, let's say 290, it can be sold for feed. If the farmer wants to scrap something under the limit, there's no government program to compensate him for the loss, so therefore the farmer will have an incentive to sell it (or feed it to his own cattle), even if it's contaminated to 290 Bq/kg.

The farmers would probably prefer to get straw that has lower contamination levels, but there is only so much uncontaminated straw and as long as it's under 300, it will end up getting used somewhere. There's just no incentive I can see for a farmer to scrap any straw that measures 290 bq/kg. Even if it puts their cattle over the limit they can still sell the contaminated cattle to be destroyed under the government program. If they had to take the loss, I'm sure they'd be much more careful about what they feed their cattle.

The other thing to keep in mind is, the contamination can be a little spotty. So you might measure a sample of straw from a field and find it's only 150, without realizing that other parts of the field are more contaminated and much closer to 300 or it might even be over but since that part of the field wasn't in the measured samples, it went undetected. They only measure samples, so some of the marginal fields will have what they call "hotspots" and the cow that gets straw from one of those may go over the limit.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Alright, that makes sense. This radiation business seems a little messy and tricky to me. I know there is usually radiation in all things, but Fukushima took a hard hit, and we're seeing the consequences of nuclear energy.

The Food for the Cows is mostly imported (from the US),
afir ca 90%, this made it very expensive!

They just need to dilute the contaminated Milk with the good one (from Hokkaido)
until a "safe Level" (there is no safe level!) is reached!

One more thing that i did not know:
Cattle is a kind of Investment here, up to 20 People share one Baby-Cow
and pay for the food, etc/, until the days when they are fat and ready for the Slaughterhouse,
than the People share the profit!
This is a old and long time running Business Project!

Originally posted by Pervius
Anybody tested the Pineapples growing in Hawaii?

Ya i was wondering the same thing

uh oh, here is another, possibly worse contamination.

After finding elevated levels of radiation in rice crops near Fukushima’s damaged nuclear power plant, government officials ordered more tests on September 24, 2011. This finding is particularly worrisome, because rice accounts for such a significant portion of the Japanese diet. Preliminary tests on rice paddies in the city of Nihonmatsu, about 35 miles from the Fukushima plant, indicated that crops contained 500 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium, Japanese officials said. Under new Japanese regulations, 500 becquerels per kilogram of radioactive cesium is the highest level of radiation in rice considered safe for consumption. If results from the next round of testing show such high levels again, regulators may ban shipments of the rice. Japan has struggled to keep radiation contaminated food out of the market since the meltdown at the Fukushima plant, following the March 11, 2011 earthquake. Radiation has already been discovered in beef, milk, spinach, and tea leaves. "Following the nuclear disaster in Japan, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of requests to perform Gamma Spectroscopy analyses [radiation testing]," states Joseph Frasca, Senior VP at EMSL Analytical, Inc. "In response, EMSL began accepting food products, soils, vegetation, and water matrices to test for radiation. Moreover, we are able to process samples quickly—some in as little as one day."

RSOE