CESIUM HAZARDS FOR FARMERS
How can I as a farmer in California protect myself from cesium hazards as I cut
the grass and prepare the soil for planting. I am not getting any information from
my county ag. dept nor from publlic health nor from UC Davis so far. Seems not to
be on anybody's radar screen. PERHPAPS THIS IS TOO HOT TO HANDLE AND WOULD
PROVOKE TOO MUCH FEAR. We do have to eat and farmers have to plant.
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Of all the threads I've read
Of all the threads I've read over the past few months, this one brought me to tears.
Forget sanding masks, if you
Forget sanding masks, if you are out all day I would get a first class gas mask like an MSA elite. It retails for almost $500 and I just picked one off ebay brand new for $100 shipped. That and a hazmat poncho should reduce your exposure exponentially. I would also market to death whatever steps you take to reduce radiation levels in your farm.
We are organic vegetable
We are organic vegetable farmers in Oregon. We haven't stopped planting or harvesting and we haven't put anything into practice to neutralize radiation besides our normal addition of minerals and basic soil fertility practices. Part of me throws my hands up. We are exposed to so much crap every single day beyond radioactive particles -- what about coal plants? Just as bad!
you are on the right path
I am the farmer that started this thread. Since then I have done a lot of research, read the comments
on this site and talked with other farmers about this subject. First of all it important that soil still be
tested for cesium and summer produce as well. The conclusions I have come to about dealing with
radiation as a farmer is to 1. wear gloves, n -95 filter mask for dust, a disposable suit when on the
tractor. For the soil I agree with the above farmer that soil fertility is so so important. High amounts of
compost plus added potassium sulfate plus added charcoal and other amendments (rock dust, fish
bone meal) plus beneficial organisms (bacteria and fungi) The charcoal is from a biochar process.
It supposedly binds the radiation to it and does not release it. I am trying to avoid using the
rototiller as it creates a lot of dust, so I rip the ground and then slowly harrow it smooth and then
come in with a single shank implement and make a furrow which I fill in with the amended soil,
mix it in, smooth it out and plant. I am also planting sunflowers in my crop rows. Sunflowers
absorb cesium. There is no way around the issue. The fall out is with us and lets hope it does not
get worse. One last note; devise a program of supplementing your food with anti=oxidants to
keep your immune system robust. Most important is to eat well, give thanks we are still alive
and not loose the sense of wonder.
Cesium Hazards for Farmers
I believe the hazards are very real. Handling new hay for our horses I have felt pin pricks on my arms, never before felt in 51 years.
As a fellow rural person I am of the opinion that those we elected just want us to die. There is more they could have done to stopped the radioactivity and warn US citizens. Until this happened I was too buried in my own world to pay attention to NWO information.
Something much bigger is going on.
I believe those satelites to report radioactivity deposition exist, but that information is not shared with us.
Article farmers might be
Article farmers might be interested in. It's a study about different groups including farmers and their exposure to Chernobyl in europe.
http://informahealthcare.com/doi/pdf/10.3109/02841868709091433
If
If we could see these particles with our eyes I imagine people would have a different awareness and concern level .these radionuclides are here and are real no sugarcoating.I personally have purchased n100 masks to wear when mowing bulldozing ect.
I really feel for all the
I really feel for all the farmers here in California, and all over. I am so upset that this has happened to our farmers. I hope that this accident does not cause you harm, or make you ill. I also hope you are able to stay in business. It is bad enough we have the Monsanto's around bullying you. Now we have radioactive dust falling on you.
Please know my thoughts are with you and I hope you can some how cope with this horrible disaster.
My family farm in N Cali has
My family farm in N Cali has not planted our usual food, and we have covered our soil with plastic as of may. working to figure out how to build greenhouses with carbon filtration air.
This is no joke, there is radioactive particles falling out on our soil and watersheds, if our lungs and bellies dont grab em first. Any one who tells you different, simply does not understand, or is ignoring the facts.
If people had the info, they would be outraged. This is the biggest disaster in history. You can fight oppression, and ignorance, and poverty, and injustice, but you cant fight Radiation. It is the great equalizer. This is a disaster that we as a people created 30+ years ago, now it is time to deal with the karma of digging the earths blood and bone stuff out of the planet and setting it a fire.
Peace to all, I morn for Mama Earth, I Prepare for my family, I hope for the best, I surrender to the great unknown.
Peace.
A
Plant sunflowers in garden
Plant sunflowers in garden also remove top 3 cm of soil and bury it in a deep pit .I have seen data indicating sunflowers remove some radiation from soil just dispose of them in land fill .
I feel very , very sad,
I feel very , very sad, helpless, and abandoned by our government. We need information to learn and protect ourselves and our communities but we are no getting that. Our government would rather spend it's time and $$$ on sticking it's nose into other countries business. Chasing terrorists around the world who probably will never kill as many people as will die of cancer due to this government's response to the Fukushima disaster. The nuclear plants that the government supports are the terrorist threat around the world because it has the power to annihilate the earth and everything on it!
2002 Odds of dying from
2002
Odds of dying from ionizing and UV radiation 1 in 26,918
odds of dying from terrorism 0
odds of dying from medical errors 1 in 3061
http://riskometer.org/pages/riskringsExposures.html
Odds of dying from...compared to radiation
Please do not compare apples with oranges. Many distractions are thrown up when people ask questions about ionizing radiation risks. There is no such thing as safe amounts of ionizing radiation, regardless of comparisons with other threats to health. People are waking up to the fact that nuclear energy production is cleaner than coal but not a pristine technology. There is waste created with all technologies, in this case nuclear waste, which interacts with every material and living biosystem it encounters, given very few man made or natural disasters to start and continue the energetic interaction forever of many isotopes. Writers love to detract from the half lives of longer decaying radioactive isotopes by citing how radioactive iodine decays so quickly, in just 7-10 days when in fact, it takes almost 90 days to entirely stop decay.
Currently we've all been exposed to many more radioactive isotopes that take much longer to decay, from many years of bomb testing and local nuclear plants. No one wants to measure these dangerous isotopes or talk about them, funny thing. There is an elephant in these rooms of discussion that is not going to go away, although many will downplay and obfuscate the obvious, by various semantic diversions. After all, if the effects last a couple of life times, who cares, who will know? Scientific integrity must be separate from commercial profit motives and easy solutions for lazy bureaucrats. Scientists themselves must put the stake in the ground on owning their intellectual property enough to not sell it to the highest bidder, nor to hand their ideas to anyone looking for easy but dangerous, quick fix, solutions.
Nuclear energy production is clearly an over-protected, under-regulated energy monopoly. This has to change if we go forward with any nuclear energy production or we collectively are complicit by default for changing the natural order to include shorter life spans, lower intelligence, permanent genetic mutations that we cannot fix, and to ensure a poisonous atmosphere that will linger for thousands and thousands of years. There is no way to put lipstick on what I think is now identified as 'a bit of a pig' of an energy resource. Development of new technologies has to become a safer bet before global implementation. Engineers must design systems that do not include dangerous materials that we are unable to control in a meltdown. Those who continue to do so without oversight or care, truly do not care about collateral damage or quality of life. Killing people off with radiation a la the Petkau effect, by bio-accumulation is idiotic. Who needs it? Why plan for it? The nuclear energy industry does not qualify as efficient or clean by any stretch of the imagination when we do not know how to clean it from the environment when it gets out (ditto nano technology for it's 'systems wide' effects when it gets loose). What we don't know does hurt us, especially in technology and materials that interact with the environment, that cannot be cleaned or controlled adequately. What is designed to work for short term population spurts (if you can call 6 billion a 'spurt') does not wash for the long haul.
In short, we are not in control of nuclear technology, despite global reliance upon it. We are like Klee's 'fool' hoping for the best and taking the errors on the chin. Why are we depending on a technology that turns humans and all life systems into live guinea pigs for research experiments? Yes, coal kills too but nuclear energy kills and seriously alters everything, from ocean to sky, for thousands of years. People think it's a 'conspiracy' of elitists to depop the world, extract profit for human lives, etc. In my view, human ignorance far outweighs any conspiracy. The carrot of knowledge is always a step or two ahead of our best laid plans and intentions. Best guessing the 'risks' of nuclear energy, then promoting and monopolizing full scale usage of nuclear material, as a panacea for all our energy needs, when we know enough to seriously limit it's use ahead of time, is pure Tom Foolery.
Cesium in the milk / food supply.
15 years ago we had satellites so sensitive they could detect every X-ray machine on the planet. This was necessary to detect a missile once the silo door opened. Where is the data we need to get the answers about the radioactive load blowing on our shores? Cesium in milk is a big issue as it will sit in your bones for decades. No one is testing the concentrated forms of milk. Cheese,butter,yogurt,sour cream etc are not being discussed or tested. Maybe you folks in Berkeley can stick a Geiger counter into your lunch yogurt and give the world a better picture on our food supply safety than the FEDs who are hoping this issue will die before I do.
Cesium Hazards for Farmers
I appreciate the reply's so far on my question. My tractor is idle today and I am inside
gathering information. What would be informative would be some thoughts from the
Brawm team about the hazards of the cesium levels in our agricultural land in
California and the threat level they pose to farmers and to consumers eating the
produce. Once again this is not to panic the public though we need information.
cesium hazards for farmers
I note you may not have been answered. We are left as the uninformed, worried. my internet research tips:
Zeolite can remove from humans the particles faster than they would biologically been removed. Reading the disaster in brasil info on wikipedia they speculated it takes 4 months to remove cesium from the body biologically, based on sweat excretions slowing by then and urine tests with scintillators.
Self protection by masks and no shoes in the house and hepa filters lower level of exposure. Cover alls for work Carbon filter and reverse osmosis for water removal
Carbon, hepa filter removal for air.
HIgher doses of antioxidants, foods list to faster cellular repair and heavy metal grab like chlorella, sea weed
ireland has the deep plow technique and also the use of lime and rock soil additives to bind the cesium.
The treatment of the soil that is cleared with crushed rock to keep future contamination low. Biodynamic info on ceaum uptake in enriched soil being very low if not nothing.
You may already know all this. I just felt like if you didnt I was willing to share what I had found. Not exactly peace of mind. But at least something. Yours truly.
pick a bale of cotton, pick a bale of hay
not to alarm you or anything, but i have scratched my plans for a vegetable and herb garden this year.
I've been researching the
I've been researching the issue for some farmer friends of mine. (I'm not a scientist or farmer myself.)
The two words to learn are PHYTOREMEDIATION and SEQUESTRATION.
Pythoremediation means planting plants that suck out the radioactive elements. One of the most effective plants is Pigweed. Others are Indian Mustard and Sunflowers. Another very good one is industrial Hemp which is still illegal to grow in the US.
A 'light' contamination of soil with radioactive Cesium can be cleaned up with Pigweed by pulling and replanting the weed multiple times in a season. There are also some transgenic (GMO) plants which do a superior job of sucking out the bad stuff, but could end up contaminating the genetics of nearby plants of the same kind - and if your farm is in Mendocino County then planting GMO plants is strictly illegal.
Once you've gotten the radioactive material out of your soil, you have to put it somewhere, i.e. sequester it. I have not been able to find too much information on how to do this on a farm, so the following is simply my semi-educated guess on what might work:
Bentonite clay absorbs and sequesters the radioactive elements. A clay-lined pit can be dug. When you pull the phytoremnediators out of your soil, toss them in the pit along with some more clay. Keep the pit covered so that 1) it does not get rained on 2) the wind does not blow the clay away 3) animals/kids dont get into it. As the organic material decays, the radioactive elements will be left behind. At that point I would think they should be left alone, since handling/moving the dry clay will simply re-release the bad stuff into the local environment.
During Chernobyl, authorities planted Willow trees as a method of sequestration. Not sure how practical that would be, and besides the trees will eventually die and rot. A pit might (?) be easier to create a no-go zone around which would make it safer.
That's my take. I do not think it is an overreaction to be considering these things, but at the same time I recognize that the levels we are talking about are small. I am concerned about the long-term presence of these materials in the soil since ingestion seems to be the primary way harm is caused in these cases.
I haven't bothered to include links; please do your due diligence investigation (as you are doing right now), and I wish you the best of luck!
I do want to include one
I do want to include one link - this page has a copy of USDA Bulliten #2107 - Defense Against Radioactive Fallout on the Farm.
http://www.ki4u.com/illwind.htm
http://www.scribd.com/doc/37878078/Farmer-s-Bulletin-No-2107
Alex
Somewhere on the net I read
Somewhere on the net I read a recommendation that (small) farmers cover their plots so as to prevent the contaminated rain from soaking the soil. There are various practical issues with doing that and doing that in a timely manner.
Elsewhere on the net I encountered something pertaining to "managing" contaminated fields. In at least some "heavily" contaminated areas I believe farmers added something to the soil in order to reduce crop uptake. I can't remember what that was or remember whether potential downsides were mentioned.
I think soil contamination is somewhat tricky, in that different radionuclides penetrate the soil at different rates and you can actually end up with more heavily contaminated crops down the road once the radionuclides sink down to the level of the roots. I think uptake is also a function of which specific crops are grown, which might give one some options. There was, once upon a time, probably a fair amount of research and thought given to the matter and some of it is surely still around. It may take some digging though.
If you look hard you might find a forum or two that is frequented by small organic farmers or the like... where open discussion and exchange of ideas takes place. I wouldn't hold my breath though. Perhaps a better bet would be a survivalist forum.
As for grass cutting, perhaps wear a mask and bag clippings and dispose of the clippings appropriately? Just a thought.
I'm not a farmer but I'm
I'm not a farmer but I'm planning to have a home vegetable garden so I'm very curious about this, too. How will we ever know if this is truly a non-issue or if it's being deliberately swept under the rug? It seems like by the time the truth is established it will be way too late. Are many farmers pursuing this issue or are they just going with the flow of dismissing any potential dangers?
Option
One option is to remove the topsoil. It would dramatically reduce the cesium levels. I did it for about 1/4". If you have clay soil and live in CA, it probably didn't go down much further than this at the higher concentrations.
After removal, I watered quite a bit to disperse the cesium so it's less concentrated in any layer of the soil.