Reassuring facts from my son about radiation in Pacific seafood: Dad, please dont post this, it is incredibly misleading and the public health consequences of people not getting enough omega-3 in their diet are really severe right now. I dont want to refute all 28 of the points in this article in a Facebook comment, but all of the points they cite are misleading...every single one of them. If you want some examples, the author says wildlife diseases are attributable to radiation, but the articles they link to point to viral infections instead. Second, the levels observed in fish were caught off the coast of Fukushima for monitoring purposes, this is not fish Japan is catching commercially or exporting and in fact ALL fish in Japan is monitored for radiation now. They also imply that Canadian authorities are detecting increased radiation in fish shipped to Canada from Japan, but if you read the article they cite it says these were samples caught in Japan for monitoring and not exported to Canada; it was only a Canadian official commenting on the Japanese research. Even just off the coast of Fukushima, where the most radioactive fish are being observed, the levels of contamination have gone down dramatically (jfa.maff.go.jp/e/inspection/index.html). If you want to buy a geiger counter, I think you should. However, you should post the actual results from the geiger counter for all the fish you buy on facebook and compare it to the radiation from a banana so that your friends get straight facts. All bananas are radioactive and usually have 15 becquerels of radiation, the levels in our fish and seafood supply will be much lower than this and nobody says eating a banana is harmful. Lets do some simple math though. Keep in mind that 300 tons of radioactive water are leaking into the ocean per day, but one cubic meter (about 3 x 3 x 3) is one ton. You could literally contain that 300 tons in an area about 17 meters by 17 meters. The vast majority of the fish we consume in the US is farmed on land or in the North Atlantic, so it is not really at risk of contamination. However, the closest major fishery that could conceivably be at risk is the Alaskan salmon and pollock fisheries. These are approximately 3,000 miles from Fukushima, or 15.8 million feet away. So if in a worst case scenario ALL 300 tons of radioactive water headed directly for Alaska and stayed on the surface of the ocean, then that 18 x 18 area would be diluted by a factor of 15.8 million. However, when water flows into the ocean, it disperses radially and also vertically into the depths of the ocean. I have no idea how deep the waters are between Japan and Alaska, but lets assume (generously) that 5% of all the radioactive water from Fukushima ended up in the Alaskan fishery, this would mean 1/316 millionth of the Fukushima radiation is ending up in Alaska. Since 60 billion becquerels of radiation are leaking into the ocean every day from Fukushima, this means that the equivalent of 189 becquerels are reaching Alaskan waters, or the equivalent of 13 bananas per day being dumped in the ocean. Now spread these 13 bananas per day over the millions of salmon and pollock caught per year and the amount per fish is not even measurable. I am sorry to be passionate about this, but people are needlessly dying right now because they are not getting the cardioprotective benefits of omega-3s. Americans already eat way too little fish, and for some reason this year a few key articles have scared everyone away from it and seafood consumption is dropping rapidly. Before this year, when intake was increasing, Harvard researchers estimated 96,000 Americans were dying per year from low marine omega-3 intakes. Now intake is declining and articles like this contribute to more deaths.
Posted on: Thu, 24 Oct 2013 08:31:52 +0000
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