{"id":94431,"date":"2017-06-26T12:00:29","date_gmt":"2017-06-26T11:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=94431"},"modified":"2017-06-23T10:32:42","modified_gmt":"2017-06-23T09:32:42","slug":"fukushimas-radiation-will-poison-food-for-decades-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/06\/fukushimas-radiation-will-poison-food-for-decades-study-finds\/","title":{"rendered":"Fukushima\u2019s Radiation Will Poison Food \u201cfor Decades,\u201d Study Finds"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Photo by Live Action Hero | CC BY 2.0<\/p><\/div>\n

22 Jun 2017 – <\/em>Three of the six reactors at Japan\u2019s Fukushima-Daiichi complex were wrecked in March 2011 by an earthquake and tsunami. The destruction of emergency electric generators caused a \u201cstation blackout\u201d which halted cooling water intake and circulation. Super-heated, out-of-control uranium fuel in reactors 1, 2, and 3 then boiled off cooling water, and some 300 tons of fuel \u201cmelted\u201d and burned through the reactors\u2019 core vessels, gouging so deep into underground sections of the structure that to this day operators aren\u2019t sure where it is. Several explosions in reactor buildings and uncovered fuel rods caused the spewing of huge quantities of radioactive materials to the atmosphere, and the worst radioactive contamination of the Pacific Ocean ever recorded. Fukushima amounts to Whole-Earth poisoning.<\/p>\n

Now, researchers say, radioactive isotopes that were spread across Japan (and beyond) by the meltdowns will continue to contaminate the food supply for a very long time.<\/p>\n

According to a new study that focused on \u201cradiocaesium\u201d \u2014 as the British call cesium-134 and cesium-137 \u2014 \u201cfood in Japan will be contaminated by low-level radioactivity for decades.\u201d The official university announcement of this study neglected to specify that Fukushima\u2019s cesium will persist in the food chain for thirty decades. It takes 10 radioactive half-lives for cesium-137 to decay to barium, and its half-life is about 30 years, so C-137 stays in the environment for roughly 300 years.<\/p>\n

The study\u2019s authors, Professor Jim Smith, of the\u00a0University of Portsmouth, southwest of London, and Dr. Keiko Tagami, from the\u00a0Japanese National Institute of Radiological Sciences, report that cesium-caused \u201cradiation doses in the average diet in the Fukushima region are very low and do not present a significant health risk now or in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

This phraseology deliberately conveys a sense of security \u2014 but a false one. Asserting that low doses of radiation pose no \u201csignificant\u201d health risk sounds reassuring, but an equally factual framing of precisely the same finding is that small amounts of cesium in food pose a slightly increased risk of causing cancer.<\/p>\n

This fact was acknowledged by Prof. Smith in the June 14 University of Portsmouth media advisory that announced<\/a> his food contamination study, which was published in\u00a0Science of the Total Environment. Because of above-ground atom bomb testing, Prof. Smith said, \u201cRadioactive elements such as caesium-137, strontium-90 and carbon-14 contaminated the global environment, potentially causing hundreds of thousands of unseen cancer deaths.\u201d<\/p>\n

No less an authority than the late John Gofman, MD, Ph.D., a co-discoverer of plutonium and Professor Emeritus of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, spent 50 years warning about the threat posed by low doses of radiation. In May 1999, Gofman wrote, \u201cBy any reasonable standard of biomedical proof, there is no safe dose, which means that just one decaying radioactive atom can produce permanent mutation in a cell\u2019s genetic molecules. My own work showed this in 1990 for X rays, gamma rays, and beta particles.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Fukushima-borne cesium in Japan\u2019s food supply, and in the food-web of the entire Pacific Ocean, emits both beta and gamma radiation. Unfortunately, it will bio-accumulate and bio-concentrate for 300 years, potentially causing, as Dr. Gofman if not Dr. Smith might say, hundreds of thousands of unseen cancer deaths.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>John LaForge<\/em> is a Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and edits its newsletter.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

22 Jun 2017 – According to a new study that focused on cesium-134 and cesium-137, \u201cfood in Japan will be contaminated by low-level radioactivity for thirty decades. It takes 10 radioactive half-lives for cesium-137 to decay to barium, and its half-life is about 30 years, so C-137 stays in the environment for roughly 300 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94431","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=94431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}