Nuclear Fallout is Showing Up in U.S. Honey, Decades After Bomb Tests
Eratosthenes writes:
Nuclear fallout is showing up in U.S. honey, decades after bomb tests:
In the wake of World War II, the United States, the former Soviet Union, and other countries detonated hundreds of nuclear warheads in aboveground tests. The bombs ejected radiocesium-a radioactive form of the element cesium-into the upper atmosphere, and winds dispersed it around the world before it fell out of the skies in microscopic particles. The spread wasn't uniform, however. For example, far more fallout dusted the U.S. east coast, thanks to regional wind and rainfall patterns.
Radiocesium is soluble in water, and plants can mistake it for potassium, a vital nutrient that shares similar chemical properties. To see whether plants continue to take up this nuclear contaminant, James Kaste, a geologist at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, gave his undergraduate students an assignment: Bring back local foods from their spring break destinations to test for radiocesium.
[...] So Kaste and his colleagues-including one of his undergrads-collected 122 samples of locally produced, raw honey from across the eastern United States and tested them for radiocesium. They detected it in 68 of the samples, at levels above 0.03 becquerels per kilogram-roughly 870,000 radiocesium atoms per tablespoon. The highest levels of radioactivity occurred in a Florida sample-19.1 becquerels per kilogram.
[...] Still, those numbers are nothing to fret about, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration tells Science. The radiocesium levels reported in the new study fall "well below" 1200 becquerels per kilogram-the cutoff for any food safety concerns, the agency says.
Nothing to worry about! Please move along. Exit through the Gift Shop!
Journal Reference:
J. M. Kaste, P. Volante, A. J. Elmore. Bomb 137 Cs in modern honey reveals a regional soil control on pollutant cycling by plants [open], Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-22081-8)
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