Fukushima Radiation Traced in Pacific Seafood

TOKYO — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has insisted that seafood caught near the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is safe to eat. Scientists have voiced concerns, however, that radioactive isotopes could accumulate in fish and pose a danger to human health.

Well before dawn on a cool October morning in Soma port, 30 kilometers north of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, fishermen prepare their nets and get ready to head out to sea.

Fishing resumed here last month, following the lifting of a ban imposed after it emerged in July that radioactive water had leaked into the ocean.

Buesseler said a bigger concern is the accumulation of isotopes in marine life. Earlier this year, cesium isotopes from Fukushima were found in tuna caught off California.

“The tuna that were caught off San Diego with the Fukushima cesium isotopes, they were 10 to 20 times lower than they had been off Japan. Now the new releases, the leak from the tanks - they’re changing in character. Strontium 90 has become of more concern because it’s a bone-seeking isotope. That will stay in fish much longer,” he said.

Voice of America news article

I hope I posted this correctly. I searched for previous posts, only used parts of the article, and gave credit to the news site. I found this while doing a search for news about Fukushima over the past week. The article is only 20 hours old. It appears they are now going to resume fishing in the area that is contaminated. Also of note is the radioactive tuna and the different radioactive isotope.

I have voiced my concerns over bio-accumulation and nuclear transmutation here on other threads. It appears I might be right as the scientist is echoing what I said. Anyhow just an update.

Hey man, I've got a "friend" on the inside who is trustworthy...known him for years....

And he says the radiation stories are TRUE!!!!

Who'd a thunk it. A nuclear catastrophe, a hurricane, and RADIATION?

Nahhhh.....

reply to post by Pimpintology


what we have here is a poorly understood effect of nuclear material in the wild.
and it scares me too understand that, the power of the energy unleashed into the other "weighted" elements, may design some new, material, mass,,proton, electron, uncontrolled, transmutation, into a newly formed, isotope, that we,,as a interested scientific community, should have EVERY DR.OF MOLECULAR/anything,,be openly able too ,report,,,access,, and brainstorm a solution, or at least a reliable account for the next generation,,maybe the answer has not been born yet.
but someday, he/she may at least have a clear picture/snaphot, of this , moment in time.

reply to post by Pimpintology


No worries! The FDA will make sure we are all safe, by raising the acceptable limits......./sarcasm

Good to see some evidence coming out on this. Many had commented about tuna. I imagine even fish oil pills would be off the table now. Even those bought in organic health food stores - what does that mean when it comes to this anyway - no such thing. I would like to see where this stuff is being concentrated (in fatty tissue, meat, or like you said.... bone seeking). Yes - we need some biologists to work on this to understand the particulars about its effects.

I wish there was a reliable way to test our food - personally at home. Looked up Geiger counters and one other method but it's said they aren't reliable when it comes to personal use at home. Who knows - it looks like I've eaten my last crab, lobster, salmon, and tuna. Sad for fishing industries, tragic to aquatic life, probably fatal results to humans who consume - eventually.

I have taken Krill oil religiously for years. Helps with brain function and actually crosses the blood brain barrier. Fish oil has a hard time with that. I have recently stopped taking it because I have no idea where it's coming from. I need a new solution. I dunno if flax seed oil could replace it or what. Fish oil obviously would be just as bad if not a worse idea.

reply to post by Pimpintology


Can someone explain this to me? Wasn't there tons of radioactive water leaked into the Pacific? And if that water was radioactive, won't that water remain radioactive for a loooonnnggg time? And if that water remained radioactive for a loooooonnggg time, wouldn't that mean that the ocean, since it moves water around constantly, will just move that radioactive water all over the planet!? And if it does that, won't it just keep killing sea life world wide? Just a thought.

reply to post by Pimpintology


Well if you find a replacement please keep us posted. Didn't know about krill oil so now I'm extra bummed. Just find out about it and it's now more likely to cause harm than good. I doubt anything would be as effective as a piece of our most ancient selves (if one believes we evolved from the ocean). We can try though.

reply to post by Emerys


Exactly. I know a lot. I consider myself to be way above average intelligence and I still struggle with it. That's how complex this issue is. That's why we need all governments on board. That's why we need anyone with a PHD even remotely related involved in this. If you do not completely understand it don't beat yourself up. Bio-accumulation was not brought out immediately after the incident. Nuclear transmutation as far as I know has never been brought up about the incident.

I am trying to calculate physics, molecular physics, wind currents, ocean currents, bio-accumulation, nuclear transmutation, and I am just scratching the surface of the disaster here. A lot of people I have noticed in these threads talk about this disaster in a simplistic manner. "That's not happening", "That's absurd", "I ate Tuna and it burnt my rear end". It's just not that simple.

Realize the only thing I am touching on is seafood in the north pacific and the seafood from the west coast. We haven't even gotten in to whats going to happen when those cores hit the water tables. Ugh. Anyhow I am also from Texas. I have been up too long. The radio show tonight was a good one. I did not expect it to be. I will do my best to put in more time tomorrow to dig deeper.

This is a research project I will be taking on for a long haul.

Scientists who have been studying the situation were not surprised by the revelation, since radiation levels in the sea around Japan have been holding steady and not falling as they would if the situation were under control. In a 2012 study, Jota Kanda, an oceanographer at Toyko University of Marine Science and Technology, calculated that the plant is leaking 0.3 terabecquerels (trillion becquerels) of cesium-137 per month and a similar amount of cesium-134.

While that number sounds mind-boggling, it’s actually thousands of times less than the level of radioactive contamination that the plant was spewing in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, estimated to be from 5,000 to 15,000 terabecquerels, according to Buesseler. For a comparison, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima released 89 terabecquerels of cesium-137 when it exploded. (See related: "Animals Inherit a Mixed Legacy at Chernobyl.")

Source

Let’s begin by considering the maximum concentration of Cs-137 in seawater reported in the quote above, about 150,000 Bq/m3, near the Japanese coast. Incidentally, Ken Buesseler has told The New York Times that he has received samples of seawater taken in July [2013] from near the plant that contained 10,000 Bq/m3. The corresponding level last year, only months before the disaster, was just 1.5 becquerels. Since there are 1,000 liters of water in a cubic meter and a liter of water has a mass of one kilogram (kg),150,000 Bq/m3 corresponds to 150 Bq/liter (or Bq/kg) of seawater. We further assume that the cesium bio-accumulates in fish flesh such that the concentration of cesium in the fish meat is 100 times the average concentration of cesium in the water there the fish is swimming. This is at the upper end of the range of measured ratios. Consequently, fish meat from fish taken in waters contaminated at 150 Bq/liter will be expected to have cesium-137 concentrations below 15,000 Bq/kg.

Let’s assume we are very risk averse and we want to maintain the risk of getting cancer from eating contaminated fish to less than 1x10-5, that is, the probability of getting a cancer from eating the contaminated fish will be less than one in 100,000. Keep in mind, for an average individual in the United States, the probability of getting cancer is about 40 percent and the probability of dying of cancer is about 20 percent. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) estimates that for dietary intake, the risk of getting cancer (risk of cancer morbidity) from ingesting food containing cesium-137 is 1x10-9 cancers/Bq of ingested cesium-137 (USEPA, “Health Risks form Low-Level Environmental Exposure to Radionuclides,” Federal Guidance Report No. 13, - Part 1, Interim Version, EPA 402-R-97-014, January 1998, p. 35). That is a risk of one in a billion per Bq of ingested cesium-137.

To keep the risk below 1x10-5 the consumer must limit his/her dietary intake to less than 10,000 Bq of cesium-137. Therefore this risk limit would be reached after eating about 0.7 kg of fish meat. While this is a conservative estimate of what is required to achieve a low risk, one could make a good case for quarantining fishing off the Japanese coast near Fukushima, which of course is what the Japanese government has done.

Near the west coast of the United States the maximum projected concentration is about 30 Bq/m3 some three years after the initial release. This is 5,000 times less than the 150,000 Bq/m3 concentration we have assumed near the Japanese coast. Therefore, to keep the risk below 1x10-5 the consumer must limit his/her dietary intake to less than about 3,000 kg (3 tonnes) of fish. In other words, do not worry about eating fish taken from US coastal waters. Since the concentration projected for waters near the Hawaiian Archipelago are even less than that projected for the West Coast, the same admonition applies to Hawaii.h

Source

Are fish such as tuna that might have been exposed to radiation from Fukushima safe to eat?

Seawater everywhere contains many naturally occurring radionuclides, the most common being polonium-210. As a result, fish caught in the Pacific and elsewhere already have measurable quantities of these substances. Most fish do not migrate far from home, which is why fisheries off Fukushima remain closed.

But some species, such as the Pacific bluefin tuna, can swim long distances and could pick up cesium in their feeding grounds off Japan. However, cesium is a salt taken up by the flesh that will begin to flush out of an exposed fish soon after they enter waters less affected by Fukushima. By the time tuna are caught in the eastern Pacific, cesium levels in their flesh are 10-20 times lower than when they were off Fukushima.

Moreover, the dose from Fukushima cesium is considered insignificant relative to the dose from naturally occurring polonium-210, which was 1000 times higher in fish samples studied, and both of these are much lower relative to other, more common sources, such as dental x-rays.

More about the dose and associated risk (pdf) of radiation from Fukushima to marine life and humans.

Woods& Hole Source
Pdf Source

Up in the middle of the night wanted to look up Stronium-90 the new bone seeking isotope found in the Tuna caught off the shore of California. Sr-90 has a half-life of 28.8 years then transmutes through beta decay into Yttrium-90 with a short half-life of 64 hours which then transmutes through beta decay into Zirconium-90.

a primordial nuclide that decays via double beta decay with an observed half-life of 2.0×1019 years;[1] it can also undergo single beta decay which is not yet observed, but the theoretically predicted value of T½ is 2.4×1020 years.[2] The second most stable radioisotope is 93Zr which has a half-life of 1.53 million years.

I can't even do the math on that but I stopped at Zirconium-90. Not sure where it goes from there. This is part of what people are missing, bioaccumulation which is exactly what the scientist points out in the article. You see if it doesn't go away then the radioactivity just continues to rise. By the time it works its way up the food chain to us it could be highly toxic.

reply to post by Human0815


You are derailing my thread by intentionally posting walls of text which is against the TOS. You can post excerpts and post your opinion but not walls of text. Its called excessive quoting. What you're quoting also has nothing to do with what we are discussing. I would appreciate it if you would just stay away from my threads unless you want to post on topic.

If you do not edit that post I am reporting you. I have seen you do this in other threads already.

reply to post by Pimpintology


Please read the Pdf:
File about Radiation in Fishes

Human0815
reply to post by Pimpintology

 

You are just plain Ignorant

I had hoped to do some more research tonight but I cannot with you personally attacking me and derailing my thread. Ill go find something else to do the mods have been notified.

reply to post by Pimpintology


You "Attacked" me first,
i tried to help you and your Thread with much needed Information
and you called my Help and my Input for this Thread "Spamming"
without even reading what i linked here and this is plain Ignorant!

This is a Board for Discussion and the exchange
of Information, when you want to publish your
Opinion only you need to start Blogging!

reply to post by Human0815


i'd like to point out that the last paragraph of all of that is based solely on projected numbers and not on ACTUAL numbers. it's a guess.