Food Supply

Radiation factors hard to gauge; experts say rely on official data
Bloomberg, April 16th

Geiger counters are probably ineffective for consumers in detecting hazardous levels of radiation in food and water at home, scientists, professors and device makers said. Large samples should be tested in laboratory-like settings to obtain results, said Joseph Rotunda, who heads the radiation measurement division at toolmaker Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. Determining whether food, water or milk is safe also requires expert knowledge and more sophisticated equipment than the typical devices sold online, said Atsushi Katayama, a member of the Japan Society for Analytical Chemistry.

"Just pointing a measuring device at your food before dinner is pretty much meaningless," said Katayama, who has a doctorate in analytical chemistry from Hokkaido University. "Tap water and fish, for example, require special handling, isolation and concentration to get meaningful readings."

March 31, 2011

Japanese officials are testing the soil contaminated by radiation from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to try to determine whether spring farming can begin as alarmingly high radiation levels were detected outside the evacuation zone today.

"As a ratio, it was about two times higher" than levels at which the agency recommends evacuations," International Atomic Energy Agency Official Elena Buglova said at a news conference.

Separately, the amount of iodine found in seawater near the plant has reached a new high; 4,385 times the legal limit. Officials said earlier this week that dangerous plutonium was found in soil near the reactors.

Residents within 12 miles of the nuclear plant were evacuated after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami knocked out the reactor's cooling system March 11.

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Japanese authorities began testing for radiation in seawater near the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Tuesday, but officials stressed that the elevated levels are no cause for worry

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"...Jun Misono of Tokyo’s Marine Ecology Research Institute said that while radioactive iodine breaks down relatively quickly, cesium is more persistent and can accumulate in marine animals, such as fish. “We need to carefully monitor the amount of radiation that continues to be emitted and evaluate the impacts,” he told national broadcaster NHK."

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