Historic Exposure Models of Marshall Islands & World Data vs. Fukushima's Current Events

There are vast databases of past to present monitoring of the effects of radioactive fallout since the 1950's. Perhaps this is among the reasons (ie:mass panic, upset among already depressed and malfunctioning economies) for apparent lack of concern for the deposit of radioactive fallout into the food chain? I have not heard of any part of world geography where radiation levels of Cs-137, I-131 are naturally occurring but if there is I'd be curious to know about the data on health effects. Apparently, we all have Plutonium in our bodies along with exposure to other radionuclides of course, at least according to this site we do:

https://marshallislands.llnl.gov/plutonium.php
'Everybody has a small amount of plutonium in their bodies. Plutonium occurs in nature at very low concentrations but human exposure to plutonium increased dramatically through the 1950s as a result of global fallout from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing. Marshall Islanders are potentially exposed to higher levels of contamination in the environment as a result of exposure to close-in and regional fallout contamination.'

https://marshallislands.llnl.gov/photos.php Also,the people living in the Marshall Islands are definitely breathing, eating and drinking probably alot more radioactive materials than all of us are getting even now because the researchers constantly track volunteer residents and the environment:

See: WHOLE BODY COUNTER: https://marshallislands.llnl.gov/photos17.php
VOLUNTEER IN THE WHOLE BODY COUNTER: https://marshallislands.llnl.gov/photos16.php

EXPOSURE PATHWAY ANALYSIS:
https://marshallislands.llnl.gov/photos09.php photo of a native crab
Exposure Pathway Analysis
Scientists have learned a great deal about the unique behavior of fallout radionuclides in coral soils and their routes for human exposure. The largest contributor to radiation doses from exposure to residual fallout contamination in the Marshall Islands comes from cesium-137. Cesium-137 is a fission product and is preferentially taken up by plants and transferred through the terrestrial food-chain. For example, coconut crabs (refer photo shown above) form an important and prized source of food in the Marshall Islands and, in certain locations, have been found to contain above average concentrations of cesium-137. Residual amounts of cesium-137 in the soil also contribute most to the external dose rate.

-Off my menu: All Seafood! Why? because the oceans have become the prime military and industrial sewer and the last thing I want is to inadvertently ingest enough nuclear material to invite some horrific terminal disease such as leukemia, lymphoma,lung,breast or other cancers known to be more common since 1946...
FYI:
http://swashzone.blogspot.com/2011/04/fukushima-mon-amour.html
Despite the catastrophic scope of last month’s earthquake and tsunami, the people of the Rising Sun consider themselves fortunate in at least one respect. Radioactive clouds of steam and smoke have blown eastward over the Pacific Ocean and away from major population centers in Japan. Yet, millions of gallons of radioactive coolant water were discharged at sea, and it may be years before the impact on ocean ecosystems is fully understood.

Ocean dumping of nuclear waste was banned by international treaty in the 1970s. Of concern to scientists now is not the immediate level of radioactivity but the longer-term consequences. Even minute amounts of radiation have the potential to be absorbed by plants and animals and enter the food chain. As smaller fish are eaten by larger fish, heavy metals and their radioactive counterparts bio-accumulate up the food chain until the ultimate consumer – the human population – is put at maximum risk.

Nuclear waste is a subset of the larger problem of industrial pollution, and Fukushima is merely the latest chapter of a long and appalling saga: Minamata, Love Canal, Bhopal, Deepwater Horizon, Libby Asbestos, Exxon Valdez, Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl, as the most grotesque examples. Entire ecosystems destroyed for generations, landscapes and seascapes laid waste and barren, dead zones and ghost towns, crippled economies and ruined lives … our world dies by a thousand blows.

To maintain lavish lifestyles, we consume prodigious amounts of energy and pay for it – not just in unit costs per BTU – but in terms of health and human life. In this unholy bargain, we have come to regard consumers and workers as fungibles and expendables, as a necessary sacrifice in exchange for a profligate and reckless economic system gone mad. Yet, incident after incident, and year after year, we continue to place our trust in the infallibility of our technologies and enterprises. It is a pact made with Mephistopheles Inc.
http://socket.kongshem.com/2007/10/farallon-islands-nuclear-waste-dump.html photo of bay with map and short video at site.
The Farallon Islands Nuclear Waste Dump
If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you may be surprised to learn that "more than 47,800 drums and other containers of low-level radioactive waste were dumped onto the ocean floor west of San Francisco between 1946 and 1970." (Source: The U.S. Geological Survey, a bureau of the Department of the Interior.)
Just 25 to 30 miles offshore from the Golden Gate bridge -- in a marine wildlife sanctuary, no less -- the ocean floor is littered with rusting 55-gallon barrels of radioactive waste. The U.S. Navy shipped this toxic cargo from the Radiological Defense Laboratory at the Hunters Point shipyard in San Francisco and dropped it in the sea near the Farallon Islands -- creating the first and largest offshore nuclear waste dump in the United States. Navy gunners were instructed to shoot holes in the barrels that didn't sink right away.
Nearly 50,000 drums of nuclear waste sounds bad enough, but the ocean floor around the Farallon Islands is host to even more toxic garbage: Namely, the radioactive wreck of a ten-thousand-ton aircraft carrier, used as a nuke target during the 1946 Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests.
Eager to learn what might happen to a warship when an atomic bomb explodes nearby, the U.S. Navy placed the USS Independence within one-half mile of ground zero during the "Able" atomic bomb test of July 1, 1946. This was the first of two atomic bomb tests conducted on the Bikini Atoll as part of Operation Crossroads:
Highly radioactive but still afloat after the blast, the bombed-out hulk was then towed to San Francisco's Hunters Point shipyard for decontamination experiments.
After five years of fruitless sandblasting, the Navy lost interest in the useless wreck. In 1951, the Independence was towed out of the bay and sunk near the Farallon Islands as just another (albeit quite large) chunk of radioactive waste.
The California State Lands Commission shipwreck database pinpoints the exact location of the radioactive shipwreck of the USS Independence as: Latitude 37deg 28'24'N, Longitude 123deg 07'36'W. This interactive map shows the position of those coordinates:
comments:
brigham said...
wow, why did they choose the islands? are there other such sites off the coast?
December 21, 2009 10:49 PM
James Stevens said...
In 1979, I happened to be in the library at Scripps Institute of Oceanography involved in a research project. While there, I ran across a report detailing the dumping of 1,200 barrels of nuclear waste at the Farralons. Similarly to your report above, the barrels were incased in concrete. However, the report diverged from the story above in the following respects. This report concerned the dumping of Plutonium waste from the Hanford, Washington site and which was anything but low-level. It expressed grave concerns about the environmental impact of leakages on the Pacific bioshpere with theoretical scenarios over a period of twenty years, the length of time the report predicted would lead to degradation of the concrete containers. The extreme toxicity of the waste as well the quanitity of it would eventually lead to a major ecological collapse, the report concluded. The information contained therein was in explicit detail with charts of radioactivity levels, salt water dispersion rates, directional sub sea current data indicating likely spread patterns and again, concluded that the eventual effect of the toxicity levels would be the interuption of plankton life cycles over a large geographic scale compromising the ongoing integrity of the entire Pacific biosphere. It ended with the commentary that from an engineering perspective, little or nothing could be done to prevent that collapse which, they concluded, was inevitable.
December 21, 2010 4:55 PM
simon752 said...
I'm originally grew up in Fairfax, Marin county, and not only heard but saw the large amount of Breast Cancer victims within the bay area. Could this be the cause?!?
February 7, 2011 8:35 PM
BigWhiteDog said...
I'm sorry but to tie this to any Marin county cancers is one heck of an irresponsible leap. If such clusters were found in Sonoma, San Fran, Alameda and San Mateo Counties then maybe.
If your premise was correct then there should be corresponding clusters in Farallones researchers, fishermen who frequented the area before it was closed off, and persons living right on the coast.
I'm more interested in the fact that a radioactive ship was being sandblasted at Hunters Point for 5 years. What happened to the sand and other waste and what is/was the health status of those workers.
April 8, 2011 9:35 AM