Bluefin tuna contaminated with Fukushima Daiichi cesium documented on U.S. West Coast

Common Dreams, Reuters, and the Guardian (including a videoof the Japanese government's response to the news) have reported that bluefin tuna which had migrated from Japan's east coast to the U.S. west coast tested positive for elevated levels of radioactive cesium in August 2011, about four months after massive radioactively contaminated water releases to the Pacific Ocean took place at Fukushima Daiichi. Bluefin tuna is a prized seafood. Although the levels of radioactive cesium-137 and cesium-134 are reportedly lower than Japanese and U.S. permissible levels for consumption, the U.S. National Academy of Science has long maintained that any exposure to radioactivity, no matter how low the dose, carries a health risk of cancer, and that these risks accumulate over a lifetime.

The Reuters article gives the false impression that radioactive cesium-137 is somehow naturally occurring. While Cs-137 was released from atmospheric atomic bomb tests for decades beginning in 1945, and thus can be termed a part of "background" radioactivity levels, this should not be confused with "natural background," for atomic weapons blasts, and their radioactive fallout, are far from "natural." Cs-137, with a 30 year half-life and 300 to 600 year hazardous persistence, was released in large amounts by the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, especially in March and April 2011. Cs-134, with a 2 year half-life (and 20 to 40 year hazardous persistence), contamination in bluefin tuna is unmistakably of Fukushima Daiichi origin.

Update on May 31, 2012 by admin

In a segment entitled "Charlie the Tuna Glows in the Dark?", Thom Hartmann, host of The Big Picture, interviews Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps about Fukushima's radioactive "chickens (of the sea) coming home to roost," along the California coast.

Chernobyl Radiation Leaves Male Birds Singing the Blues

One audible legacy of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster is that the woods surrounding the derelict Ukraine power plant are filled with the songs of lonely male birds.

Very high levels of nuclear contamination have killed far more of the female birds, mainly due to the stressful combination of coping with the radiation while reproducing.

Writing in the journal PLoS One, biologist Timothy Mousseau of the University of South Carolina says that after counting the number of females to males around Chernobyl, researchers concluded that lonely bachelors are spending more time calling out for mates that just aren’t there.

The study also found higher percentages of yearlings, rather than more mature birds, meaning the survival rate is relatively low in the contaminated zone.

“It’s what we’ve seen for many years now,” said Mousseau, the director of the Chernobyl Research Initiative at USC, which has sponsored studies on the long-term ecological and health consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. More.