Don't Panic, Yet: Fukushima Radiation Not Affecting U.S. Fisheries, but Many Open Questions Remain
http://www.onearth.org/blog/dont-panic-yet-about-nuclear-seafood
Don't Panic, Yet: Fukushima Radiation Not Affecting U.S. Fisheries, but Many Open Questions Remain
BY EMILY GERTZ
April 22, 2011 | (0) COMMENTS
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How are radioactive isotopes leaking from northeastern Japan's crippled nuclear plant affecting U.S. marine environments? The short answer so far: not much. According to a recent report prepared for Congress, Americans, including Hawaiians and West Coast residents, can rest easy at this point about excess nuclear glow from seafoods caught in U.S. Pacific Ocean waters.
But the report also details many known unknowns about the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster's ultimate impacts on marine environments, as well as the fish we love to eat. These open questions include: How much radioactive material will rainfall deposit into the ocean? Will radioactive elements accumulate in the marine food chain? Will migratory animals like Pacific tuna -- not known to be at all concerned with the nation-state boundaries we impose upon the ocean -- carry them into the U.S. food supply?
Dated April 15, the report from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service states that the high concentrations of radioactive iodine and cesium in the seawater next to Fukushima Daiichi will make some Japanese seafoods worrisome to human health. But scientists expect this fallout to become diluted very quickly by ocean tides and currents, unlikely to arrive in U.S. territorial waters in health-threatenting amounts or concentrations.
Observers have known for weeks that radioactive elements from Fukushima Daiichi are traveling around the globe through the high atmosphere, although at dispersed concentrations. So it's not a shock when the report states that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has found trace amounts of radioactive isotopes from Fukushima Daiichi in rainfall hitting California, Idaho, and Minnesota, in concentrations that don't threaten public or environmental health.
But ocean waters covers much, much more surface area than land on this planet. So, the authors note, no one knows how this barely-radioactive rainfall will affect radiation levels in marine ecosystems.
The conclusions regarding migratory sea animals, such as Pacific albacore tuna, are also qualified. "Barring a major unanticipated release, radioactive contaminants from Fukushima Daiichi should become sufficiently dispersed," reads the report,
"...unless they bioaccumulate in migratory fish or find their way directly to another part of the world through food or other commercial products...[I]t is unknown whether marine organisms that migrate through or near Japanese waters to locations where they might subsequently be harvested by U.S. fishermen (possibly some tuna in the western Pacific and, less likely, salmon in the North Pacific) might be exposed to radiation in or near Japanese waters, or might consume prey that have accumulated radioactive contaminants.
Photo: Fishing vessel trolling for tuna in the Pacific. Credit: NOAA. "Local fishermen catch about 100,000 pounds of albacore tuna off the Washington and Oregon's coasts each summer. Those fish spend years off the Japanese coast before migrating to the Pacific Northwest."-Seattle News
