Tag Archives | Radiation

Radioactive Oatmeal from Fukushima

By on August 4, 2012 in News 7

Via Food Quality news:

Are we about the enter the era of carrying a radiation detector to scan all food before consuming? Damn!

Radiation has been detected in commercial oatmeal in Hong Kong. Despite assurances about “low levels” of radiation, there isn’t truly ANY safe amount of radiation. This is a reasonable concern with extremely hot particles like Cesium-137, which is the culprit in this case.

Even at the miniscule level of 7 Becquerel per kg, I can’t help but wonder about the lifetime bio-accumulation of these particles in the body if they became common in many food products.  There is a lot of conflicting information from all sides of all issues on the radiation legacy of Fukushima … because nobody truly knows the long-term effects.

No recall has been issued by the Hong Kong Center for Food Safety(CFS).

Read more at Food Quality news.… Read the rest

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Demon Core: The Haunted Piece Of Plutonium That Killed Several At Los Alamos

By on July 28, 2012 in News 7

Multiple scientists tragically received fatal doses of radiation in freak accidents when handling the so-called Demon Core. Was it karma for our dropping the atomic bomb? io9 writes:

Ever heard of The Demon Core? It was named by Los Alamos scientists — who are generally not a superstitious lot — after it claimed multiple lives, in a series of strange and horrible accidents. Discover a legend of science… that’s worthy of a horror movie.

The Demon Core was a hunk of plutonium that was being used to refine the atomic bomb, just after it had been used in Japan. One of the first reactions tests was conducted, unofficially and without other scientists present, by a gifted 24-year-old physicist named Harry Daghlian. He had built up walls around the core, monitoring it all the while, and then placed a brick on top of the walls. The reaction started cranking up to critical levels, and Daglian hurried to withdraw the brick.

… Read the rest

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Full Third of Fukushima Children Face Cancer Risk

By on July 20, 2012 in News 7

 

Photo: Mononeko (PD)

According to  Russia Times, a Japanese public health organization has released grim finding: Aafter examining 38,000 children from the Fukushima Prefecture, site of the infamous nuclear disaster, the organization has estimated that a third of the prefecture’s children will be at risk for developing cancer as a result of radiation poisoning.

The Fukushima Prefecture Health Management Survey reports that over 13,000 of the children examined exhibited swollen cysts or nodules on their thyroids. Radiation penetrates soft tissues and settles in thyroids. Over time, the nodules can swell and become cancerous.

The children of the effected Prefecture will receive cancer screenings every two years until they turn 20, and will then continue to receive screenings every five years until the end of their lives.

Some physicians in the international community feel that the Japanese are not adequately publicizing the results of the study and minimizing the true danger that the children face.… Read the rest

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1913 Foresaw A Future Of Eating Giant, Irradiated Animals

By on June 13, 2012 in News 1

A century ago, the endless promise of radium pointed toward a future in which a monstrously large frog’s leg sat at the center of every dinner table. Via ZPi, a 1913 article from the Salt Lake Tribune heralding the impending use of radiation to breed enormous livestock of all sorts:

Professor Dawson Turner, at the recent meeting of the British Association, made the astonishing announcement that by treating a frog’s egg with radium he had bred a frog three times the normal size of the species. The application of this discovery may have several very important results for humanity. Perhaps its most obvious value is that it will furnish us with a means of increasing the food supply.

Even at its present stage of development the experiment is capable of greatly reducing living expenses. Frog’s legs are delicious, succulent food similar in taste to fine chicken, and in many ways superior to the choicest quality beef.

… Read the rest

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A Major U.S. Nuclear Base Running A ‘Containment Exercise’ Amid Censored Radiation Spikes?

By on June 11, 2012 in News 4

Via the 4th Media:

Amid a number of reports of massive and bizarre radiation readouts coming from experts, eyewitnesses, radiation facilities, and a key choice news outlet, it has now come out that one of the largest nuclear bases is currently running a ‘nuclear containment exercise’. The Minot Airforce Base exercise, running in North Dakota, reportedly involves the use of B-52 aircrafts. The news comes after a developing story arose over the potential cover-up of a nuclear situation stemming from near the border of Indiana and Michigan.

Sources from near where the elevated levels of radiation were observed say that a Department of Homeland Security ‘hazmat’ fleet has been dispatched after ‘years’ of inactivity. The story first erupted after online geiger readings showed an unprecedented radiation spike in the area, with levels reaching as high as 7.139 counts per minute (CPM) over the average of between 5 and 6. While there has been no official reported cause of the spike, there has been quite a bit of foul play regarding the information being put forth by many media outlets, the EPA, and even radiation measurement centers.

… Read the rest

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Fukushima Tuna Sushi Now Being Served?

By on May 29, 2012 in News 10

Bluefin_tunaIn 2008 the New York Times reported that

“laboratory tests found so much mercury in tuna sushi from 20 Manhattan stores and restaurants that at most of them, a regular diet of six pieces a week would exceed the levels considered acceptable by the Environmental Protection Agency.”

If you’re still eating tuna, you can also now start worrying about radiation poisoning, courtesy of the nuclear geniuses from Fukushima, Japan. Report via Reuters:

Low levels of nuclear radiation from the tsunami-damaged Fukushima power plant have turned up in bluefin tuna off the California coast, suggesting that these fish carried radioactive compounds across the Pacific Ocean faster than wind or water can.

Small amounts of cesium-137 and cesium-134 were detected in 15 tuna caught near San Diego in August 2011, about four months after these chemicals were released into the water off Japan’s east coast, scientists reported on Monday.

That is months earlier than wind and water currents brought debris from the plant to waters off Alaska and the U.S.

… Read the rest

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‘Radioactive Man’ Pulled Over By Connecticut Police

By on May 17, 2012 in News 4

Stop RadioactivityState police cars have radioactivity detectors … Reports Amanda Cuda in the Connecticut Post:

Mike Apatow was minding his own business Wednesday, driving to an appointment for work in Washington Depot when a state police car appeared suddenly and signaled for the Milford resident to pull over. Apatow, 42, was entering Interstate 84 in Newtown when the cruiser appeared, and he had no idea what he’d done to merit police attention. It turns out he didn’t do anything.

But earlier that day, Apatow, who’d experienced a recent spike in his blood pressure, had a nuclear stress test at Cardiology Associates of Fairfield County in Trumbull. In the test, a small amount of a radioactive material is injected into the veins and used to help track blood flow to the heart. Though the amount of radioactive material used in the test is relatively low — equal to a few X-rays or a diagnostic CT scan — it was enough to set off a radioactivity detector in the state police car.

… Read the rest

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51 Japanese Food Items Exceed New Radioactive Safety Standards

By on May 5, 2012 in News 8

RadiationWell, it’s good to know Japan’s government is seriously testing the food supply. Via the Japan Times:

Radioactive cesium was detected in 51 food products from nine prefectures in excess of a new government-set limit in the first month since it was introduced April 1st, according to data released by the health ministry Tuesday.

The limit was exceeded in 337 cases, or 2.4 percent of 13,867 food samples examined by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.

Cesium exceeding the previous allowable limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram was detected in 55 cases, while the new limit of 100 becquerels was exceeded in 282 cases. By prefecture, there were 142 cases in Fukushima, 69 in Tochigi, 41 in Ibaraki, 35 in Iwate, 32 in Miyagi, 13 in Chiba, two each in Yamagata and Gunma, and one in Kanagawa.

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Radioactive Particles from Japan Detected in California Kelp

By on April 9, 2012 in News 19

Kelp ForestReports Victoria Kim in the LA Times:

Radioactive particles released in the nuclear reactor meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami were detected in giant kelp along the California coast, according to a recently published study.

Radioactive iodine was found in samples collected from beds of kelp in locations along the coast from Laguna Beach to as far north as Santa Cruz about a month after the explosion, according to the study by two marine biologists at Cal State Long Beach.

The levels, while most likely not harmful to humans, were significantly higher than measurements prior to the explosion and comparable to those found in British Columbia, Canada, and northern Washington state following the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, according to the study published in March in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Giant kelp, or Macrocystis pyrifera, is a particularly good measure of radioactive material in the environment because it accumulates iodine, researchers said.

… Read the rest

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Fukushima Radiation Moving Steadily Across Pacific

By on April 7, 2012 in News 14

Radiation SpreadVia Common Dreams:

Teams of scientists have already found debris and levels of radiation far off the coast of Japan, one year after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima. Reports are now suggesting that nuclear radiation has traveled at a steady pace. That contaminated debris and marine life could reach the US coast as soon as one year from now, depending on ocean currents.

Radiation from Fukushima’s nuclear disaster is appearing in concentrated levels in sea creatures and ocean water up to 186 miles off of the coast of Japan. The levels of radiation are ‘hundreds to thousands of times higher than would be expected naturally’ according to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). Researchers are questioning how the radioactive accumulation on the seafloor will effect the marine ecosystem in the future.

“What this means for the marine environment of the Northwest Pacific over the long term is something that we need to keep our eyes on,” said the WHOI.

… Read the rest

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