Tuesday 10 April 2012

RADIOACTIVE PARTICLES FROM JAPAN DETECTED IN CALIFORNIA KELP

I live a few hundred miles north of Los Angeles. I am sure that the radioactivity stops at the American ~ Canadian border because they tell us there is not problem in Canada. Ooops!  Did I say they tell us? I mean, the government ignores the problem completely and makes no mention of it at all. When I told some friends that they might be wise to NOT gather kelp for their garden that it might be radioactive, I was jeered. This was last autumn when my common sense told me this was a definite outcome of F*ck-y0u-ishima. As for living by the ocean and eating its bounty ~ I have not had salmon or cod for over a year! But then again…. Maybe that radioactivity stops at the border. After all radiated creatures are turning up dead in Alaska…

Mutated sea otters anyone? These lovely creatures live in those seabeds!

By Victoria Kim
April 9, 2012 

Radioactive particles released in the nuclear reactor meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami were detected in giant kelp along the California coast, according to a recently published study.

Radioactive iodine was found in samples collected from beds of kelp in locations along the coast from Laguna Beach to as far north as Santa Cruz about a month after the explosion, according to the study by two marine biologists at Cal State Long Beach.

The levels, while most likely not harmful to humans, were significantly higher than measurements prior to the explosion and comparable to those found in British Columbia, Canada, and northern Washington state following the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, according to the study published in March in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Giant kelp, or Macrocystis pyrifera, is a particularly good measure of radioactive material in the environment because it accumulates iodine, researchers said. They wrote that radioactive particles released into the atmosphere, in particular radioactive isotope iodine 131, made its way across the Pacific, then was likely deposited into the ocean during a period of significant rain shortly after the meltdown in Japan.
The highest levels were found in Corona del Mar. Researchers wrote that the levels were probably highest there because the kelp is also exposed to urban runoff, which may have increased the amount of rainfall it received.

Photo: Unit 6, left in center, and Unit 5, right in center, reactor buildings are seen at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, as seen through a bus window in Okuma, Fukushima prefecture, northeastern Japan, Feb. 28, 2012. Credit: Kimimasa Mayama / Associated Press

ED: Note that chemtrails appear in Japanese skies as well!

The study’s authors said that while the effect of radioactive material in kelp is not well known, it would have been consumed by organisms that feed on the kelp such as sea urchins or crustaceans. Certain species of fish, including opaleye, halfmoon or senorita may be particularly affected because their endocrine systems contain iodine, according to researchers. 

"Radioactivity is taken up by the kelp and anything that feeds on the kelp will be exposed to this also,"  Steven Manley, the study's lead author, said in a statement released by Cal State Long Beach.

"It enters the coastal food web and gets dispersed over a variety of organisms ...  It's not a good thing, but whether it actually has a measureable detrimental effect is beyond my expertise."

ED: A thoroughly unprofessional comment here: Duhhhhhh!

The researchers also analyzed kelp from Sitka, Alaska, for comparison, but did not find radioactivity. The kelp there may not have been exposed to the same degree because of atmospheric patterns.

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