Sockeye Salmon Tested - Cesium 134 and Cesium 137 Detected -BRAWM Response Please

Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 2012-07-02 15:47

My wife and I are avid salmon consumers. We live in Seattle and have followed with concern the radiation leakage occurring in the Pacific from Fukushima. Due to the lack of current testing of presently caught salmon by either the US or Canada governments, we decided to have two sockeye samples tested ourselves.

I purchased two Copper River sockeye samples from our local PCC Natural Markets Store (similar to Whole Foods, but located only in the metro Seattle area) last Thursday morning. I then packed them in ice and shipped them overnight to the Radiation Center at Oregon State University in Corvallis. They arrived in Corvallis on Friday morning. The Senior Health Physicist for the Center then ran radiation exposure tests on each sample with their High Purity Geranium detector (I also paid for this testing). I was sent the test results about an hour ago.

The results showed the following:

Cesium 134(bq/kg):

Sample 1 - 9.02 x 10
Sample 2 - 8.91 x 10

Cesium 137 (bq/kg):

Sample 1 - 1.47
Sample 2 - 1.26

I would greatly appreciate a response from someone on the BRAWM Team as to these test results and their significance. And, I'm sure, many other readers of this forum would also appreciate their input.

Thanks.

JamesW

‹ Radiation Levels in Young Thai Coconuts The Chemicals within Us ›

Using-a-Geiger-Counter-to-test-food-for-Radioactive-Contaminatio

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 2012-07-13 06:53.

http://technologypals.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Using-a-Geiger-C...

This is significant because

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 2012-07-04 09:51.

This is significant because the Sockeye travels further out into the pacific than other salmon species. You can see a map of salmon migration patterns at this link
http://www.goldseal.ca/wildsalmon/salmon_migration.asp?pattern=summary
However, the salmon move much more slowly in their migrations (than for example the Bluefin tuna being talked about of late) so the sockeye used in the tests were almost certainly returning and far from any radioactive matter.
Repeating these tests for at least the next 6-10 years will be very telling.

WOW! Science in the Public Interest - Who'd have thought?

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 2012-07-04 07:24.

I, like the other posters here, thank all involved for their efforts, and it seems the anomalous CS134 readings were due to the exponent being dropped somewhere along the communication path. Just for due diligence, can someone substantiate the test conditions, including the distance of the sample from the detector?

Also, I would like to see the results of tests on salt substitute, tuna, cod and kelp, for starters. I understand that in the Ukraine, you can have any food sample tested at local high schools by the science teachers. I realize that we cannot expect to enjoy the same level of government interference in our personal liberty over here, but isn't this sort of what BRAWM's mandate is?

Professor Farnsworth

Ukraine testing

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 2012-07-06 08:08.

It's sad but funny how many people on this forum have this interesting perception of Ukraine. Almost idealist. I'm from Ukraine, went to school there too and let me tell you there's no equipment in schools to test radiation. Students are lucky if there are any tools at all. Government is corrupt, schools are getting by by a thread, teachers are severly underpaid. When Chernobyl went off people didn't know about fallout for ten days! Children played in radioactive rain. And after the accident became publicly known do you think there was food and water testing like here? Nope.

Thanks

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2012-07-03 12:00.

James W

Thanks for your concern and many thanks for sharing the preliminary results of your test.

Interesting

BRAWM Response

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2012-07-03 11:04.

I have now spoken on the phone with the Chair of the Department, Karl Van Bibber, and have forwarded to him and to K Vetter and E Norman the actual test report. I have been assured that the report will be reviewed and comments posted in the Forum.

Salmon results are non-detections

Submitted by bandstra on Tue, 2012-07-03 14:47.

I have corresponded with James about his results. Here is part of the report from OSU:


Here is what I told him:

As they say in the summary, the OSU Radiation Center lab has not found any evidence of Cs-134 or Cs-137 contamination in your two samples. They have given their Minimum Detectable Concentrations (MDCs) for those two isotopes, which are very low. The MDC represents the statistical limit of the detection system and depends on the detector, the time of acquisition, sample size, and other factors.

To be more explicit, those results could also be written in the following way:

Sample 1
Cs-134: < 0.902 Bq/kg
Cs-137: < 1.47 Bq/kg
Sample 2
Cs-134: < 0.891 Bq/kg
Cs-137: < 1.26 Bq/kg

The units Bq/kg are Becquerels per kilogram, a measurement of decay rate of an isotope. One Becquerel is another way of saying "one nuclear decay per second."

For comparison, the typical activity concentration of the naturally-occurring isotope Potassium-40 (K-40) in salmon is on the order of 100 Bq/kg, or 100 decays per second per kilogram. So they showed that the activity levels of Cs-134 and Cs-137 cannot be more than about 1% of the K-40 level, which is a very low level.

Mark [BRAWM Team Member]

Thanks to Mark, Karl and the rest of the Staff

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2012-07-03 15:58.

My apologies for not interpreting the test results properly everyone. However, I am extremely pleased that, in this particular case, I was wrong!

Again, my thanks to the Chair of the Department, Karl Van Bibber, and to Mark for the assistance they have provided with this effort.

You're very welcome. Science

Submitted by bandstra on Tue, 2012-07-03 16:21.

You're very welcome. Science is really its own language, and it almost always requires some interpretation.

Mark [BRAWM Team Member]

Thank you.

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2012-07-03 01:52.

Thank you, James, for having this salmon tested. My family (huge Pacific salmon consumers, pre-Fuk) greatly appreciates this information.

Did you happen to have another look at that report to see if your decimal point was out of place, or that possibly a different measurement unit was utilized... referring to the whacked 134:137 ratio?

Again, I truly appreciate your time and financial investment in obtaining this data, and that you shared it with the rest of us.

MM

thanks

Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 2012-07-02 23:35.

Thanks for spending your own cash - this is important for anyone who eats.

Look forward to hearing more about the reports and figuring out why the 134/137 ratio is out of whack.

Very interesting.

Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 2012-07-02 17:22.

Great work getting this done, but something is messed up with your Cs-134 data. Cs-134 and Cs-137 were released basically a 1:1 ratio...a lot of the Cs-134 has since decayed and so the ratio now is going to be close to 0.70 Cs-134 to 1.00 Cs-137. Your numbers would indicate that there is close to a hundred times more Cs-134 than Cs-137...no way.

I'll bet you're reading it wrong and what we've really got here on the Cs-134 is ~0.90 bq/kg for both samples and that would work well with the Cs-137 numbers. This would gives us total levels of about 2.5 bq/kg combined cesiums...pretty low, but still a lot higher than what was seen in milk by BRAWM.

Please email me the reports if you would and I'll look 'em over. I'm not an expert but I've looked at a few of these over the past year and kind of have a feel. My email is downwiththisnewcentury@hotmail.com

BC 7/2/12

Salmon testing

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 2012-07-04 08:58.

The State of Washington is testing returning salmon. It was on the news last month and also mentioned by the Governor at her press conference at Ocean Shores.

Radiation Report

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 2012-07-03 07:09.

I have sent the report from Oregon State to BC for his review.

If I can upload the report into the forum directly, then I will be happy to do so.

Any ideas on how this can be done?

JamesW