The purpose of this post is to provide a brief update on the recent results of seawater and Pacific salmon monitoring carried out by the InFORM project and our partner Our Radioactive Ocean tracking Fukushima derived contamination near North America. The post is the most recent in an ongoing series whose purpose is to provide scientifically accurate information regarding the impact of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster on environmental and public health. Recent work by our team of academic and government scientists and our citizen scientist volunteers sampling coastal waters have demonstrated the following:
Activities of the isotope 137-Cesium (137Cs, half life ~30 years) that is the most significant with respect to potential health impacts have peaked at ~10 Bq meter-3 (Bq = Becquerel = one decay per second) in seawater offshore. These values are about 8-10 fold lower than maximum levels in the North Pacific resulting from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing in the 20th century and 1,000 fold lower than the maximum allowable concentrations in Canadian drinking water. Fukushima derived radiocesium can be detected at low levels of ~1-2 Bq meter-3 at the coast of the United States and Canada as of this writing There has been little to no impact on the levels of artificial radionuclides in species of Pacific salmon and shellfish after the Fukushima disaster according to our sampling from 2014 through 2016Taken together, this scientifically derived information suggest that the overall risk to health of the environment and public along the west coast owing to the Fukushima disaster is extremely low. The InFORM project will continue to make measurements of seawater and marine organisms into 2019 in order to understand what the maximum levels of contamination, and therefore the risk, from Fukushima will along our west coast.
A recent summary in the press about our collective efforts can be found in the following article written by Tracy Loew for those that are interested:
Fukushima radiation has reached U.S. shoresby Tracy Loew
For the first time, seaborne radiation from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster has been detected on the West Coast of the United States.
Cesium-134, the so-called fingerprint of Fukushima, was measured in seawater samples taken from Tillamook Bay and Gold Beach in Oregon, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are reporting.
Because of its short half-life, cesium-134 can only have come from Fukushima.
Also for the first time, cesium-134 has been detected in a Canadian salmon, the Fukushima InFORM project, led by University of Victoria chemical oceanographer Jay Cullen, is reporting.
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