I-131 uptake and reduction of risk
Since radioiodine ( I-131, I-129, I-134 etc) accumulates in the food chain and concentrates in fat cells, hence appears high levels in the milk of goats, cows, and women - I am wondering if you can add depth to your monitoring initiative to consider if nonfat milk (milk, nonfat cheese, nonfat yogurt) from the same dairy/same production date has a different level of I-131.
Point being, would be good if the data you are developing illustrates ways people can reduce their risk of internal ingestion. As someone who has worked extensively with the declassified foodchain studies (native american and pacific islanders and their health effects from internal ingestion of radioisotopes in fallout) this sort of information (how to reduce risk) was typically not studied.
Quick question, Anonymous...
...Since you've made a career, as I understand it, of researching these sorts of isotopes and their effects on Pacific Rim populations -- how does what we're getting, in your opinion and experience, compare to what they got dusted with? I assume there's an "apples to oranges" aspect to this, however, because -- correct me if I'm wrong -- their exposures would have been stretched out over a period of years, perhaps decades, while ours are (for the moment, anyway) far more short-term...
Anyway, any thoughts you might care to share would be very greatly appreciated, and also about what sort of cancer (or other chronic illness) rates you observed among those populations, and their effects.
It sounds like a lot to ask, I understand if it's too large and unwieldy a store of knowledge to be effective encapsulated here.
Rick Cromack.
Allen, Texas
RichardFCromackJr@gmail.com
I-131 uptake and reduction of risk
Cold War fallout from nuclear weapons testing (locally, regionally and globally) represents a hugely different level of exposure. To give you some sense of relative difference, the CDC 1998 estimate of I-131 fallout from testing in the Marshall Islands estimated a release 42 times the amount of that I-131 released by the testing in Nevada, and 150 times the amount at Chernobyl.
That said, the Fukushima release differs from nuclear tests (a single emission as opposed to months of continuous emissions - at different levels and scale).
What is most apparent from the overall lived experiences (we are now 4 generations out) is that people who are chronically, not acutely, exposed to low level radiation have serious health outcomes (including cancers, reproductive disease and congenital defects, but also degeneration disease affecting heart, metabolism, etc) largely as a result of their internal absorption (bathing in polluted lagoons), inhalation (breath smoke from cooking fires that use fuel which has bioaccumulated and concentrated levels of cesium and other isotopes) or ingestion (ie: foods grown in contaminated soils, shellfish, coconut crab, seaweed and other near shore marine foods). But also, as Chernobyl worker studies have shown, as a result of the genetic damage from exposed parents.
The US, and the northern hemisphere, has been blanketed with atmospheric contaminants and experiencing fallout at higher or lower levels continuously since nuclear were first used. The thing I worry about is that public health response in the US (and its former Marshall Islands territory) has not utilized findings from foodchain studies which present well-documented links between internal ingestion and adverse health outcome. Some range animals, such as rabbit, for example take up and concentrate I-131 at a much greater level than cow. Goat uptake is of greater concern than cow. Pregnant women, young children, children entering puberty, and immune-system challenged populations are all at risk of greater health effect from trace exposures.
Interesting info...thanks
Interesting info...thanks for sharing this