{"id":61523,"date":"2015-07-27T12:00:07","date_gmt":"2015-07-27T11:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=61523"},"modified":"2015-07-27T09:17:37","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T08:17:37","slug":"photo-of-mutant-daisies-near-fukushima-goes-viral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/07\/photo-of-mutant-daisies-near-fukushima-goes-viral\/","title":{"rendered":"Photo of \u2018Mutant Daisies\u2019 Near Fukushima Goes Viral"},"content":{"rendered":"

23 Jul 2015 – <\/em>A recent photograph\u00a0of less-than-perfect daisies near Japan\u2019s Fukushima<\/a> nuclear disaster site is\u00a0generating headlines<\/a> and is\u00a0making the rounds on social media.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/san_kaido\/status\/603513371934130176\/photo\/1<\/p>\n

The image,\u00a0showing daisies with a fused center and petals growing out the side, was\u00a0posted by Twitter user @San_kaido<\/a> of\u00a0Nasushiobara, a city that borders Fukushima prefecture to the north. According to a translation from the\u00a0International Business Times<\/a><\/em>, the tweet reads:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe right one grew up, split into 2 stems to have 2 flowers connected each other, having 4 stems of flower tied belt-like. The left one has 4 stems grew up to be tied to each other and it had the ring-shaped flower. The atmospheric dose is 0.5 \u03bcSv\/h at 1m above the ground.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Should we be\u00a0worried about these flowers being a sign of the End Times? Anyone who\u2019s ever eaten \u201cugly\u201d produce<\/a> knows that these variations from \u201cperfection\u201d\u00a0are rare but normal.<\/p>\n

Gardening experts explained to\u00a0the International Business Times <\/em>that\u00a0\u201cabnormal growth that distorts the heads of daisies and other wildflowers is caused by hormonal imbalance.\u201d So this photo\u00a0might not be a sign of the effects of nuclear radiation but from fasciation, aka cresting, \u201ca relatively rare condition of abnormal growth in vascular plants. Fasciation may cause plant parts to increase in weight and volume,\u201d the experts added.<\/p>\n

A post on Snopes<\/a>\u00a0also pointed out that\u00a0\u201cdaisies showcasing similar mutations have been found at locations far away from nuclear radiation,\u201d citing this photo<\/a> of a daisy in the Netherlands and this photo<\/a> in Idaho.<\/p>\n

In fact, if\u00a0you type in \u201cmutant daisies\u201d into Google images<\/a>, up pop countless images of this \u201cdeformation,\u201d a point made by Mike Shellenberger, president of environmental research group Breakthrough Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/MichaelBTI\/status\/623368298089054208\/photo\/1<\/p>\n

Still, real horror stories<\/a> have emerged in the four years since a powerful earthquake and tsunami struck the nuclear power plant, and Japan is still reeling from the devastation.<\/p>\n

As Harvey Wasserman<\/a> reported<\/a>, 300 tons of radioactive water have been pouring into the Pacific every day.<\/p>\n

He also wrote in a separate post<\/a>, \u201cmore than 48 percent of some 375,000 young people\u2014nearly 200,000 kids\u2014tested by the Fukushima Medical University near the smoldering reactors now suffer from pre-cancerous thyroid abnormalities, primarily nodules and cysts. The rate is accelerating.\u201d<\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/p>\n

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Go to Original \u2013 ecowatch.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

23 Jul 2015 – A recent photograph of less-than-perfect daisies near Japan\u2019s Fukushima nuclear disaster site is generating headlines and is making the rounds on social media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61523\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}