[4]Painting by Jonathan Raddatz [5]Radiation from Japan’s nuclear accident has turned up in seaweed on the coasts of California [6], Washington [7] and other parts of the West Coast of North America.
The ocean is so big … how could this be happening? Why didn’t the gigantic Pacific Ocean better dilute Fukushima radiation?
A 1955 U.S. government report concluded that the ocean may not adequately dilute radiation [8] from nuclear accidents.
MIT says that seawater which is itself radioactive [9] may begin hitting the West Coast within 5 years.
In 10 years, peak radioactive cesium levels off of the West Coast of North America could be 10 times higher [10] than at the coast of Japan.
As we’ve previously noted, Reuters reports that Alaskan seals are suffering mysterious lesions and hair loss [11]:
Scientists in Alaska are investigating whether local seals are being sickened by radiation from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant.
Scores of ring seals have washed up on Alaska’s Arctic coastline since July, suffering or killed by a mysterious disease marked by bleeding lesions on the hind flippers, irritated skin around the nose and eyes and patchy hair loss on the animals’ fur coats.
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“We recently received samples of seal tissue from diseased animals captured near St. Lawrence Island with a request to examine the material for radioactivity,” said John Kelley, Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Marine Science at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
“There is concern expressed by some members of the local communities that there may be some relationship to the Fukushima nuclear reactor’s damage,” he said.
Here’s a picture of one of the injured seals [12]:
[13]
We reported yesterday that a new scientific paper shows that the Fukushima radioactive plume contaminated the entire Northern hemisphere during a relatively short period of time [14], and Ene News today reports [15] on a potential correlation:
Map from a study appearing in the upcoming edition of the journal Science of the Total Environment [16]
[17]
(Note the blue line):
[19]
(The correlation is not exact … but close enough to ask whether the radioactive plume hit Western Alaska and was then carried around the coast by ocean currents.)
Radioactive fish [19] are also being found off the West Coast.
A California-sized island of debris [20] from Japan is also hitting the West Coast.
And West Coast residents have also been exposed to Fukushima radiation from the air. See this [21], this [22] and this [23].
Indeed, some doctors claim that people [24] living on the West Coast have already been killed from Fukushima radiation.
Fukushima … the gift that keeps on giving.