{"id":13412,"date":"2015-10-14T08:54:42","date_gmt":"2015-10-14T13:54:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13412"},"modified":"2015-10-14T08:54:42","modified_gmt":"2015-10-14T13:54:42","slug":"fukushima-radiation-in-pacific-reaches-west-coast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=13412","title":{"rendered":"Fukushima Radiation in Pacific Reaches West Coast"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fukushima Radiation in Pacific Reaches West Coast<\/a><\/h3>\n

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\u201c[W]e should be carefully monitoring the oceans after what is certainly the largest accidental release of radioactive contaminants to the oceans in history,\u201d marine chemist\u00a0Ken Buesseler said<\/a>\u00a0last spring.<\/p>\n

Instead, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency halted its emergency radiation monitoring of Fukushima\u2019s radioactive plume in May 2011, three months after the disaster began. Japan isn\u2019t even monitoring seawater near Fukushima, according to a Sept. 28 story in \u201cThe Ecologist<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The amount of cesium in seawater that Buesseler\u2019s researchers found off Vancouver Island is nearly six times the concentration recorded since cesium was first introduced into the oceans by nuclear bomb tests (halted in 1963). This stunning increase in Pacific cesium shows an ongoing increase. The International Business Times (IBT) reported last Nov. 12 that Dr. Buesseler found the amount of cesium-134 in the same waters was then about twice the concentration left in long-standing bomb test remains.<\/p>\n

Dr. Buesseler, at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, announced his assessment after his team found that cesium drift from Fukushima\u2019s three reactor meltdowns had reached North America. Attempting to reassure the public, Buesseler said, \u201c[E]ven if they were twice as high and I was to swim there every day for an entire year, the dose I would be exposed to is a thousand times less than a single dental X-ray.\u201d<\/p>\n

This comparison conflates the important difference between external radiation exposure (from X-rays or swimming in radioactively contaminated seawater), and internal contamination from ingesting radioactive isotopes, say with seafood.<\/p>\n

Dr. Chris Busby of the Low Level Radiation Campaign in the UK explains the distinction this way: Think of the difference between merely sitting before a warm wood fire on one hand, and popping a burning hot coal into your mouth on the other. Internal contamination can be 1,000 times more likely to cause cancer than the same exposure if it were external, especially for women and children.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fukushima Radiation in Pacific Reaches West Coast \u201c[W]e should be carefully monitoring the oceans after what is certainly the largest accidental release of radioactive contaminants to the oceans in history,\u201d marine chemist\u00a0Ken Buesseler said\u00a0last spring. Instead, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency halted its emergency radiation monitoring of Fukushima\u2019s radioactive plume in May 2011, three months […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5493,340,1164,3423,580,2142],"class_list":["post-13412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-counterpunch","tag-fukushima","tag-north-america","tag-nuclear-meltdown","tag-nuclear-radiation","tag-radiation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13413,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13412\/revisions\/13413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}