Milk and Kale update 6/1
6/1 (7:04pm): A milk sample with a Best By date of 6/6 was added to our Milk results. We have our seventh non-detection of I-131 in milk, and Cs-134 and Cs-137 both continue to decline.
In addition, the food chain samples have been updated with one new kale sample measurement (5/19). Unlike one of the previous samples from 4/28, no fission product isotopes were detected.
Mark [BRAWM Team Member]
Hey guys, you might want to
Hey guys, you might want to rethink the milk thing...
http://www.chrismartenson.com/martensonreport/part-2-arnie-gundersen-int...
"Arnie Gundersen: Well, the cow milk predominantly would have iodine and we are out now at 80 days and most of the iodine should have disappeared because it has an eight day half life and the rule of thumb is 10 half lifes. But we are still seeing iodine which is kind of strange and it gets back to that issue of criticality re-criticality that we talked about earlier. So I’m still telling friends until the middle of June stay away from milk and dairy products. Clearly washing the vegetables is critical. In Japan we are saying avoid fish caught in the Pacific, unless you know they are caught a long way away from Fukushima. I am saying 100 miles of Fukushima, don’t even consider it. I think that will actually get worse with time. Greenpeace has some numbers that came out indicating that it is worse with time. So we are telling the Sea of Japan is a different story. You can probably feel safe eating fish from the Sea of Japan. But if you believe it came from the Pacific, avoid it.
There is two isotopes there; the predominant one is cesium, which is a muscle seeker so of course fish meat is muscle and cesium is likely to build up in your body if you take it from fish. The other one, strontium, which would be in the fish bone. So unless you have some kind of a delicacy that uses the fish bone, the fish is unlikely to expose you to strontium. So eventually though we are going to see top of the food chain animals like tuna and salmon and things like that that have this process bio accumulates. The bigger fish gradually get higher and higher concentrations. And I am concerned that the FDA is not monitoring fish entering the United States because sooner or later a tuna is going to set off a radiation alarm at some part and people are going to think it’s a dirty bomb or something like that. So that’s not here yet because the tuna haven’t migrated across the Pacific. But I am thinking by 2013 we might see contamination of the water and of the top of the food chain fishes on the West Coast."
I bought some milk for the first time this week thanks to BRAWM
I really have been very reluctant to drink any milk or milk products until the levels were totally undetectable by BRAWM but I realized that the cesium etc in the air, water, produce etc is, at this point, so widely dispersed that totally avoiding it is impossible. Now that radioiodine is undetectable consistently I feel better about the milk and the radiocesium dangers, while unknown, are probably unavoidable for the most part if I eat at all.
I am still very concerned about the Strontium 90 potential and wish there was testing for this but as a practical matter, whatever exposure there is is now so widespread that my best course of action is to try to eat as much food unlikley to be contaminated as possible and hope that the radioprotective affects of tropical fruit (southern hemisphere), frozen blueberries, turmeric, etc will help heal and reduce the free radicals which are certain to occur as a result of this contamination.
If there had been no BRAWM testing and posting of results, i would still have been uncertain which course was the best one for me and my family.
I am VERY grateful for all the testing (and looking at all the results I am astounded at how much work has gone into this).
I hope that you continue and also that you post results soon again for strawberries, mushrooms, soil and grass especially and continue the testing of milk.
I expect the levels to rise and fall some, but seriously whatever harm is occurring from these contaminants is pretty much a given now, sadly. so now it is all about not so much avoidance (although I will still avoid strawberries and much produce I am concerned about or minimize consumption of these things) but eating that which will counter the free radicals produced and help heal myself and my family with a better diet all the way around.
Thanks Brawm. The worries continue, diminished a little thanks to you folks, but NOW the hard work begins: tracking the effects of the contamination on infant mortality, birth defects, miscarriages, cancer rates, hypothyroid and endocrine and metabolic disorders etc which will ALL be BETTER able to be studied thanks to all your hard work.
It is historically important environmental heroism on your part and you deserve many kudos and much gratitude.
Alright Bill and Rick, since
Alright Bill and Rick, since you two are often speaking for many of us in this forum, can you share your reasoning for drinking milk again? You both have been keeping up with the data and I'm hoping you can tell me in Joe Blow terms why you're comfortable with it now.
Also, would you let your kids drink it at this point? (I know BRAWM would say yes, but...) I realize you both are not 'experts' -- since we all share the same paranoia, I thought maybe you could share your rationale with me so I can be less paranoid about it too.
What tipped the scale to non-paranoia? LOL (being serious though)
Thx.
I am not really comfortable with Milk, but...
Here are some of my reasons which I had hoped were sort of clear in my post:
1. The radioiodine seems to be pretty much gone. With a radioactive life of about 10 weeks it seems that it is about all gone. It has been ten weeks and is not now detected by BRAWM, so I believe that danger is gone almost 100%. I worried most about thyroid problems caused by the iodine 131 as the problems can be almost immediate with hypothyroidism and damaged endocrine system the first casualty from radioiodine. With it seemingly gone this worry is almost gone.
2. The nuclear power plants in the US and globally emit many radionuclides which are unavoidable already (and I believe are harmful to us) and cesium 137, with a half life of nearly 30 years and a radioactive life of 300 years, is found throughout the environment. The levels in milk still concern me, especially with the recent uptick, although tiny, BUT the radiocesium has dispersed throughout the food chain and is in everything more or less where the dry and wet (rain) deposits occurred so they will be in all produce for years to come more or less. No way to avoid that very much if one is to eat any fresh foods or milk, cheese, butter etc from the US. I simply cannot afford to eat only "safe" foods right now.
3. My kids are not young kids, they are "Millenials" (meaning in or around their teens) so the risk to them is unacceptable BUT also unavoidable - so at this point if they eat any foods they will likely be exposed, and milk does not seem to be especially higher than anything else it might be in. I went to an artists reception the other night and they had chocolate covered strawberries (big ones) undoubtedly from California. I spent an hour debating whether to eat them. I ate one after a glass of wine. Then they offered to send some home for the kids. I took three of them home and gave one or two to my son. Reluctantly. But he loves, for example, lettuce and spinach and other foods that are also undoubtedly contaminated in small amounts with the cesium so there is no way to avoid it.
4. Health reports and studies on cesium are pretty scarce but the real dangers from such small amounts as are found in the milk now seem impossible to avoid whatever they may be. I do not buy the BRAWM/government flying analogies for internal doses nor am I especially comforted by the argument that potassium and other natural nuclides in food from nature are more dangerous (not enough data for me) BUT since radiocesium is dispersed pretty much globally NO food is likely to be guaranteed free from some small amounts of radiocesium. So the amounts in milk now seem on balance with everything else and NOT more risky as it was with radioiodine.
5. I work sometimes on an organic farm and was engaged in gardening which got me covered with dirt, mud, rainwater, AND some spring produce I harvested from this farm were undoubtedly also contaminated to some extent based on local EPA readings for rain, milk and drinking water. I reluctantly ate some of the spring greens etc I harvested so as not to waste them. In retrospect I wish I hadn't, more or less, but they are good hearty organic food with some radioprotective antioxidents. On balance they may do more harm than good or more good than harm. Impossible to say. I feel the same way about the milk. So I probably got way more dosed from soil, mud, water, spring greens and air already. Milk might be the least of my worries (I drink well water too)
6. OK - with the milk: Vitamin D is said to have good radioprotective qualities. In other words milk, too, may do more to keep me healthy than the risk TODAY from the cesium. Three weeks or so ago with the radioiodine, I felt differently. Its gone. But the radiocesium is there, and is likely to continue. The amounts ARE lower, more or less, and I expect that they will continue because they are now in the cows and in the grass for some time. No way to completely avoid it.
SO -
Do I , at this point, forget about milk and dairy and their benefits (I grew up on a dairy and believe in the benefits - especially of raw milk) or do I run the risk that the benefits are outweighed by the harm?
I suspect that most conventional milk I drink and give to my kids now, due to the prohibitive cost of raw milk, is probably mostly hay and grain fed and not as risky as raw, from organic grass fed cows. I may be wrong. But standard milk seems much less risky than even two or three weeks ago.
I am not happy about it but I feel like I NEED some milk in my diet and my kids and NOW the risks of occasional milk seem to be outweighed by the benefits of the calcium and vitamin D, especially, which have radioprotective attributes. Besides, it is nearly impossible to avoid the risk if I want to eat at all - and since I cannot afford a totally safe diet right now, I bought milk. I am not sure it is the right decision. But it is one I will have to live with.
An absolutely essential question...
...and I'm going to give it the response it (and you) deserves. Which means: Total transparency. Though you may be shocked and disappointed by my answers.
For me it was an agglomeration of objective facts, personal realities and general circumstances.
First: I concluded several weeks ago, based on the best information available to me at that time, that unless the entire Fukushima plant had to be evacuated, resulting in a series of full-scale, uncontrollable, predominantly atmospheric meltdowns, the airborne component (and, therefore, the precipitation-borne vector) of this event for North America was likely to top out at somewhere between 25% and 200% of what the U.S. received from Chernobyl. Using bar-napkin estimations, I figured there was a marginal chance that the U.S. could be subjected to up to 250% of what EUROPE suffered from the 1986 disaster. Eyeing cancer rates worldwide, and recognizing that for even the most Chetnobyl-affected countries and regions, average lifespans have generally continued to rise over the last quarter-century, I decided that although there would certainly be an increased risk resulting from Fukushima, it was at this point unknowable, unquantifiable, and impossible to eliminate given the exposure of the remainder of the environment and food chain to currently widespread radionuclides.
There were many other factors in my decision, however.
Next: I and my family are and will continue to be consumers of processed, prepackaged, and restaurant / retail food. ANYTHING, from pizza dough to I've cream to Weight Watchers cheese to Brownie mix, for the next several years is likely to be to some extent contaminated, and I simply cannot "catch" it all. I am not a farmer, a millionnaire, or a hermit. My family lives in the world, and will continue to. We have no other option. Even if we did... What, am I going to smack my daughter's hand every time she reaches for a slice of cake at a friend's birthday party? O am far too ineffectual a "goalie" to catch or deflect every single one of the radiologically "hot" shots on goal the world we now live in is likely to take on me and mine. I do not live in a fortress, a compound, the Bunker from "Blast from the Past", the island from "No Escape", or the facility from "The Island". Nor would I want to. Living in the contemporary world carries risks, some known and acknowledged and nominally preventable; most, not. This falls somewhere between "known, possible to defend against to a minimal degree" and "so universal, it's bloody futile".
Next: I am not in total control of my daughter's diet. I have in-laws, they have access, and I have precious little influence over what happens when I am not in the room... And, frankly, not a helluva lot more when I AM in the Goddamned room. I am picking my battles carefully right now, and I consider seafood of unknown origin, as well as fish oil, seaweed, kelp, soy sauce, green tea, and Asian food to be one heckuva lot more dangerous than homegrown dairy at the moment. Again -- I simply CAN'T stop it all. Sometimes you only fight the battles you MIGHT actually stand some chance of WINNING.
Another consideration: My daughter, once the second-tallest girl in her grade, has in the past two tees lipped down to merely "average" height. An athlete, she has suffered broken bones and needs them to be sturdier. She is also missing several adult teeth; they simply never came in. And her milk intake's been dropping for some time, now. She needs her calcium, and, like her old man, she has difficulty taking pills. So, there's that.
Bit perhaps the greatest factor was this: I finally realized that I CAN'T FIX THIS. You know, I'm a fairly masculine Guy, I guess. I believe in the man's God-ordained role as leader, provider, and protector. I tend to try and take charge of situations, a real Type-A personality. But this is simply too big for me. Radiation is EVERYWHERE (I know, BRAWM would disagree). What the Hell can I do about it? Seal up the house? Refuse to go outside? Stop breathing? Refuse to drink? Starve?
...At some point, all of life becomes a calculated risk. That has been, for me, the ultimate lesson of Fukushima: LIFE IS DANGEROUS, and unpredictable, and unavoidable. So I stop drinking milk, eating cheese, buying ice cream cones for my daughter from McDonald's, which is a family Friday-night tradition for we Cromacks. Will that stop her from getting thyroid cancer from that air we sucked in the weekend after the reactor buildings exploded, when we were outdoors for three days in a row at the Dallas Arboretum, the Fort Worth Zoo and the Richardson Wildflower Festival, when local gamma and beta readings were at their highest, and before I thought to pay attention to the local conditions? Will it stop that deadly free radical triggered by thar one ice cube that was in my wife's iced tea glass from a neighbor's backyard barbecque, that hadn't been reverse-osmosisized or charcoal-filteted or checked for cesium by any regulatory authoy whatsoever? Will it prevent me from getting stomach cancer from that hamburger I eat two years from now, that unbeknownst to me, was in part cobbled together from cheap meat sold at a discount to a usually reliable wholesaler that thought they were getting Texas beef, but took delivery on Kobe beef instead?
There are simply too many variables, too many unknowable possibilities, too many Byzantine permutations, to believe seriously in ANY measure of long-term control, at this point. I THINK I can keep us, for the most part anyway, away from Pacific Ocean seafood; I'll call that a victory, and let God take charge of the rest, for the peace of my mind, my relationships and my household. So we'll drink milk, yes, and I'll pour half-and-half into my coffee, and buy my daughter ice cream cones from Mickey D's every Friday. And we'll swim in pools, and do cartwheeled and round-offs in the grass, and go for long walks in the cool of the evenings. And we'll continue to live our lives, with humility, discernment, and gratitude, and pray life doesn't get any more fucked-up than it already is, and remember that God is in control, and we are most certainly not.
Rick CROMACK.
Allen, Texas
LOL, Bill...
...Looks like you and I were on the same frequency, today. Cheers.
Rick Cromack.
Allen, Texas
Decreasing cesium levels
Can you explain how cesium-137, with a half life of 30 years, can be decreasing in a matter of weeks?
Dispersion
Sure. The reason is that cesium gets dispersed in the environment.
In the case of milk, the rain and air deposited the Cs-134 and Cs-137 on the soil. Some of that cesium gets taken in through the roots of plants; the rest diffuses down through the soil, helped by subsequent rainfall.
Some of the grass is eaten by cows, and the cesium ends up being taken in by the cow, including in the milk. But as time goes by, less and less cesium is in the cow's food (due to the soil diffusion), so the levels in the milk should decrease as well.
Does that make sense?
Mark [BRAWM Team Member]
great news
dear brawm: thanks so much for your ongoing testing, reporting and patient, thorough explanations.
i am also guessing that with less contamination in the rain (and far less rain in cali), that the green leafies just aren't soaking in contaminants thru the broad surface areas of their leaves. one of criirad's recommendations was to water green leafy veg's at the base of the plant (if watering with rainwater) to avoid radioactive contamination of plants...
It gets eaten and
It gets eaten and incorporated into people, and then there is less of it in the environment.
Same # of radiation fallout cancers predicted, just dispersed...
Yes, the radiation fallout does get dispersed, but according to epidemiologists, these low levels of radiation will still result in X number of cancers. The cancers just will be dispersed over a much wider range. And, how the heck do we track resulting cancers, when they are not likely to show up utile years later over a much wider area? The Fukushima radiations plumes went hither and thither. Not comforting news.
"the radiation fallout does
"the radiation fallout does get dispersed, but according to epidemiologists, these low levels of radiation will still result in X number of cancers"
Can you develop a bit on that? The idea sounds plausible but I don't really understand how dispersion becomes irrelevant.
I mean, if the almost undetectable level of contaminants is a risk, the differences in natural background radiation between different areas (which can reach 3 mSv/y) would also be statistically detectable.
P.S., I know my mind is just
P.S., I know my mind is just rambling on and on. But, that which we have little control over is just plain scarey. Extremely miniscule amounts of radiation have been detected. But, even such small amounts of radiation are said to be cumulative, when added to already existing amounts in the human body. So, in ten to fifteen years, where does that leave us, as the Fukushima radiation plumes just keep circulating round and around, every now and then coming down with the gentle rains. And, the rains will silently fall.
Just wondering....
I recently learned that
I recently learned that Celsium 137 only stays in body tissue for 70 days, so the cumulative effect is not going to grow that much if it leaves the body's tissues.
Not 'Untile'; rather, should
Not 'Untile'; rather, should be spelled 'until'. Gees, just one little glass of radiation spiced wine... What an irradiating thought. Not.
Mark and BRAWM- Thank you
Mark and BRAWM-
Thank you for this info.
Can you comment any on the bio-dispersion of these materials? Obviously, there is more CS-134/137 here than pre FK, but soon, they will become non-detectable, which is not to say gone, just non-detectable by current methods. Is it just going to become nearly equally distributed in topsoil, and then crops, etc - below detectable, but still there? This I suspect. I also suspect that rigorous testing, which no one would care to fund, would show a hell of a lot of man made radioactive junk in your Wheaties, wine (as previously posted, the Cs-137 level in some wines can be used to verify it's age), etc.
Then again, I looked at some of the great stuff you posted about internal levels of radiation today, and was not that surprised to find not only radium but uranium and thorium in the mix. Yes, we are living with this already. Perhaps this explains Lady Gaga and the Twilight series. Hard to say.
Again, thank you. I both love and hate science, but what else is there to measure this?
BC
PS- My new windstorm measurements lurk below. If you have time.