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“Absolutely Every One” – 15 Out of 15 – Bluefin Tuna Tested In California Waters Contaminated with Fukushima Radiation
We noted more than a year ago:
The ocean currents head from Japan to the West Coast of the U.S.
***
Of course, fish don’t necessarily stay still, either. For example, the Telegraph notes that scientists tagged a bluefin tuna and found that it crossed between Japan and the West Coast three times in 600 days:
That might be extreme, but the point is that fish exposed to radiation somewhere out in the ocean might end up in U.S. waters.
And see this.
CNN reports today:
Low levels of radioactive cesium from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident turned up in fish caught off California in 2011, researchers reported Monday.
The bluefin spawn off Japan, and many migrate across the Pacific Ocean. Tissue samples taken from 15 bluefin caught in August, five months after the meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi, all contained reactor byproducts cesium-134 and cesium-137 at levels that produced radiation about 3% higher than natural background sources
The Wall Street Journal quotes the studies’ authors:
“The tuna packaged it up and brought it across the world’s largest ocean,” said marine ecologist Daniel Madigan at Stanford University, who led the study team. “We were definitely surprised to see it at all and even more surprised to see it in every one we measured.”
***
“We found that absolutely every one of them had comparable concentrations of cesium-134 and cesium-137,” said marine biologist Nicholas Fisher at Stony Brook University in New York state, who was part of the study group.
The bad news is that is is only going to get worse.
As Reuters points out:
Unlike some other compounds, radioactive cesium does not quickly sink to the sea bottom but remains dispersed in the water column, from the surface to the ocean floor.
Fish can swim right through it, ingesting it through their gills, by taking in seawater or by eating organisms that have already taken it in ….
As CNN notes:
Neither [of the scientists who tested the fish] thought they were likely to find cesium at all, they said. And since the fish tested were born about a year before the disaster, “This year’s fish are going to be really interesting,” Madigan said.
“There were fish born around the time of the accident, and those are the ones showing up in California right now,” he said. “Those have been, for the most part, swimming around in those contaminated waters their whole lives.”
In other words, the 15 fish tested were only exposed the radiation for a short time. But bluefin arriving in California now will have been exposed to the Fukushima radiation for much longer.
As KGTV San Diego explains:
The real test of how radioactivity affects tuna populations comes this summer when researchers planned to repeat the study with a larger number of samples. Bluefin tuna that journeyed last year were exposed to radiation for about a month. The upcoming travelers have been swimming in radioactive waters for a longer period. How this will affect concentrations of contamination remains to be seen.
One of the studies’ authors told the BBC:
The fish that will be arriving around now, and in the coming months, to California waters may be carrying considerably more radioactivity and if so they may possibly be a public health hazard.
Japanese and U.S. officials – of course – are pretending that the amount of radiation found in the bluefin is safe. But the overwhelming scientific consensus is that there is no safe level of radiation … and radiation consumed and taken into the body is much more dangerous than background radiation.
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That may stop overfishing. If by no other means than, it will kill the consumers.
Uh. How did nuclear waste end up in the Ocean?
Uh. Japan is a pile of rocks and sand that is barely holding itself together.
How can there be unequivocal evidence that these particular tuna have radiation from Fukushima? Its kind of a big ocean. When I read statements like that it is very difficult for me to take them seriously. "The shadow of Chornobyl covers the USA" - writemypaper.org
So a lot of us seem worried about our risk from radioactivity in our food, air, water, etc.
Ever stop to think that the die-off in honey bees in the northern hemisphere might be related to this? Poison tuna won't kill a lot of us, but total crop failure might.
Nah, that's too simple ... Never mind, the die-off is probably a PTB-Monsanto conspiracy.
Interesting thought. Although I believe the bee colony die-offs were well underway long before Fukushima. Could be the proliferation of cell-phone towers sprouting all over the countryside, constantly blasting wireless signal traffic, which in turn could be scrambling the internal message traffic used by bee colonies. Or it could be latent effects of pesticide and/or GMO crops manifesting in the bee's biological makeup.
I agree that it is a problem that deserves far more investigation than it gets......but I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss Monsanto's hand in it. There is tons of information on that organization out there, and much of it ain't pretty.
Sorry, I was thinking of Chernobyl and the old atmospheric testing, with Fukushima merely being yet another contributor. The bees have been dying for years. The fact that Australia remains one of the few places with a healthy bee population got me on the track of the North-South hemisphere thing, since most of the testing occurred in the North, But quite a bit of the testing also occurred in the South Pacific, so I'm all wet there.
That's why I said, "Never Mind." It is more plausible that Monsanto is behind it either with their GMO killing off the bees by accident or by plan of new Frankencrops that don't need bees but can only be "unlocked" if you pay them a licensing fee. If the latter, the world will be a dreary place unless they plan to provide flowers as well, but when did central planners ever care for the common man having a little colour in his life?
Thought the bees were (are) victims of mites.
Frankenmites that have been juiced up by exposure to radioactivity????
My cats eat lots of tuna, but they won't live long enought to die from it. I (age 63) won't live that long either.
{Blues riff}
Don't none of you F'ers care 'bout the future?
I don't cause I'll be gone
Yeah, I'll be gone.
{End on 7th chord}
"A person all wrapped up in himself makes a pretty small package!"
---Unkkknown
My cats eat lots of tuna, but they won't live long enought to die from it. I (age 63) won't live that long either.
{Blues riff}
Don't none of you F'ers care 'bout the future?
I don't cause I'll be gone
Yeah, I'll be gone.
{End on 7th chord}
On the upside, when you're jonesin for that late night tin of tuna, you won't have to turn a light on in the kitchen to find it. Smaller carbon foot print <hi 5!>
This new Tuna Fad will now be hyped as they latest cure for cancer.
wait till the tuna pick up a plutonium particle, and then people starting ingesting that.
can you say clusterfuck?
Fucking funny, these scaremongering idiots here now act like they are suddenly somekind of experts on radiation and radioactivity but I'd bet, most of them failed or barely passed chemistry and physics in high school.
Your high school teacher would certainly slap you in the face for being so fucking stoooooopiiiiiiiid. You do not even bother reading the basics of radiation like back then in high school.
But you are not alone. For example Italian diplomats were hurriedly brought back to Rome from Tokyo during the Fukushima accident. Rome has btw higher background radiation level than Tokyo had even with Fukushima "fallout". Idiots are all around.
What's really funny, Timmah, is that there are quite a few people here who actually have done things, in the real world, in which you get a lot more in-depth training about radiation than you do in your high school classes you are in.
For example, anyone and everyone that has been in the military gets NBC (that's Nuclear, Biological and Chemical to you, youngster) training pounded into their head so much, even the below-average Neo-Neandertals actually learn that rads are bad, and worse if they're in you.
Before you go off spouting all your newfound Google facts and calling people stoooooopiiiiiiiid, perhaps you could try one more Google-search: Look up "Bioaccumulation" and please give us a 100 word essay as to why this may be a factor in your adolescent development....
You're an obvious gubm't troll. Lookin' forward to living in SLC? Mormons gonna bash your brains out for using the F-word.
You would know.
What -
No Huffington Post link?
Whoopty fucking do, GW. 3% higher than background means nothing when the background varies by an order of magnitude or two more than 3%
"and radiation consumed and taken into the body is much more dangerous than background radiation." - is also a meaningless statement. You have alpha and beta particles and gamma rays; each particular type will do the exact same thing regardless if they're from a "background" source or from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tuna.
Ingesting an alpha or beta source is of course really not something you want to do; none of this is to say that cesium contaminated tuna are not a problem, but most of your article makes me cringe.
If you want to be taken seriously you need to stop sounding like you failed 6th grade chemistry and physics.
So STFU then.
I'll have you know i passed 6th grade. That would be 6th grade EVERYTHING buster. Now "tell me where we can get the correct information" please! (Let me guess..."nowhere.")
http://theness.com/roguesgallery/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Blinky-300x2...
Food is notoriously hard to measure for radiation, anyway. Whatever the truth, we aren't being told it.
Not everything that can be measured counts; not everything that counts can be measured.
This is for Mr. Pelosi to some bailout money for his fisheries in the Pacific...they destroyed the central valley so as to allow the lil fishes which Mr. Pelosi fisheries feed off of..go figure.
What a 'glowing' report.
very punny!
I have a couple hundred cans of tuna in my "end of the world" stash of food....But I bought 90% of it before fuckashima :)
Don't you mean fuckedashima?
ha, ha, yeah, I just grabbed a can out of my stash called "King of the Sea" tuna, bought it in 2010, MRE's in 2009, waiting for the world to collapse and live like an animal.
Oh, and an emergency water filter to drink piss if needed, but not radiation proof. : (
This report is an interesting scientific observation but as of right now it has no health significance. Those 15 tuna had on average 350 becquerels of K-40 per kg of tissue. This is completely natural and is about the same as the radioactivity is each our own bodies. The Cs-137 levels from Fukushima were about 30 bq/kg. A becqueral of Cs137 and K 40 have comparable energies on average -- neither is an alpha emitter.
There is no evidence at all that the natural K-40 is damaging to life (concentrations simply too low) so there is nothing to worry about with Cs-137 levels 8% of background.
I bet this guy is not having tuna salad for supper any time this week?
Aaaaand enter the government sock puppet, telling all us sheeple about how safe radiation is to eat and breathe and swim in. "There is no evidence", blah, blah, blah......puhleeeze, just stop already. We're on to your game now. You can run, but you can't hide.
It has been repeatedly demonstrated that radiation is safe to eat and breath and swim in. There is no evidence to the contrary. Please remeber these facts when you post.
"There is no evidence at all that the natural K-40 is damaging to life (concentrations simply too low) so there is nothing to worry about with Cs-137 levels 8% of background."
I have posted this here before:
The most prevalent sources of radiation the average person receives: the natural Potassium-40 (K-40) in their bodies causing 200,000 radiation-producing disintegrations per minute in a 150 pound person, mostly beta and some gamma radiation, but that is only 1/5th the amount of irradiation they get from the radon progeny they inhale daily, in many areas of the country in large quantities, resulting in highly ionizing alpha particles irradiating the lungs, the second leading cause of lung cancer in the US, and the cosmic radiation that's twice as great for someone who lives at 5000 feet ASL than for someone at sea level.
The figures below are average figures and would be much higher for someone living in a high radon area, which is very many of us (from both
ground and radon sources). Check the map at the link below. Remember that this is continuous, low level, 24/7/365 irradiation:
Radon 200 millirem/yr
Body 40 millrem/yr
Cosmic 31 millirem/yr
Ground 28 millirem/yr
Consumer products: 11 millirem/yr
Using natural gas in the home: 9 millirem/year (from radon)
Total - 319 millirem/yr of unavoidable exposure
Chest X-ray 4 - 10 millirem
Dental X-ray (panoramic) – 1 millirem
US radon hazard zone map:
http://www.epa.gov/radon/zonemap.html
George Carlin's Hippy-Dippy Weatherman said, "Radar shows a line of thunderstorms approaching from the north... the radar also shows a
squadron of Russian ICBMs, so I wouldn't sweat the thunderstorms."
Stop sweating the thunderstorms.
Jesus Christ ! why is not someone doing something about this? Why is there legislation banning radon, cosmic rays, body and ground. That would reduce overall exposure by 399 millreems per year. What wrong with this picutre!
yeah the hippy dippy weather man also said that a Canadian low is not to be confused with a mexican high either!!
Yes, Cs 137 is not an alpha emitter, but it is a very strong gamma emitter. It also does NOT occur naturally in nature, it's an isotope that is purely the byproduct of human nuclear pollution.
So, saying that the Cs 137 found in fish, NOW, is "similar to background" levels is like saying, "the pollution level in the fish is no worse that the pollution we released with all of our other radiation mishaps, so it's okay".
But while gammas penetrate the body much further than Betas and Alphas, they are not nearly as ionizing (damaging) to tissue as the less penetrative but highly ionizing alpha particles. Thus, it's the vast counts of alpha particles generated by the radon progeny that you breath daily that should be the vast majority of anyone's concerns with radiation.
And, interestingly, the rain-out of those radon progeny from the atmosphere during rain showers causes intermittent, significant increases in background radiation at ground level.
Geiger counter hobbyists have also found that the radiation level in their homes increases significantly after they vacuum because the radon daughters that had electrostatically "plated out" on carpet are released by the vacuum cleaner's disturbance. So for all of you paranoid types, be sure to hold your breath while vacuuming and open all windows, even in winter. What? You haven't been doing that? Then you've probably just endangered your health to a greater extent than any of the hazards thus far hyped here.
Geiger counter hobbyists have also found that the radiation level in their homes increases significantly after they vacuum
Cool, an excuse not to vaccuum.
GIVE ME STRONTIUM OR GIVE ME DEATH!
After Fukushima blew I took my geiger counter with me on a vacation to Yosemite to see is I could detect any incoming from Fukushima. Going from the central valley to Anawahee Lodge, the back ground radiation doubled. Probably due to Radon released in all of the granite stone work.
No geiger counter was able to see any cpm above background in that 3 to 6 week period after Fukushima.
I guess all that detectable radiation pickup by EPA monitoring stations located across the US was just a coinkydink.
Sorry Charlie...
I knew you would be making a big deal about this, blowing it totally out of proportion without listing all of the facts. I didn't read the articles and columns you got this info from so I can't tell if your omission of facts was intentional, but I can tell you what I heard in an interview with the scientists who conducted the study. They made the point of pointing out that the level of radioactive isotopes in these fish is minuscule and vastly less than what you'd get eating bananas, Brazil nuts, leafy green vegetables, carrots, etc., with their natural, "you'll never get away from it" radioactive isotopic components.
So, take a chill pill and stop hyping things that are nothing.
You must be Mr. Numauchi.
Guest Post: “I Cannot Talk About Radiation With Anyone” (EX-SKF, Jan. 4, 2012):
Your blog is excellent.Thank you!
Unlike you, Winston, some of us don't believe everything we are spoonfed, especially when the people doing the feeding have a history of misrepresenting the truth when it suits their interest. You want to eat glow in the dark tuna, go ahead my friend. Stop apologizing for these fools. They want you as dead as they want me.