No one seems to really know how much radiation has entered the sea near the crippled Fukushima power plant, just how far this water will drift, or how badly radiation will contaminate ocean fish and sea vegetables such as seaweed. What we do know is that hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive water has been dumped in the sea, or flown from the land to the sea. And, we haven't reached the end of it yet.
But, as I predicted in my post on April 15, seaweed has indeed been found to be contaminated. On May 13, the environmental activists group, Greenpeace announced that it had found much higher than normal levels of radiation contamination in seaweed off the coast of Japan, as much as 65Km from the crippled Fukushima power plant (their vessel was reportedly not allowed into territorial waters to do its sampling). It has called on Japan's government to undertake a comprehensive testing of the seaweed along the coast, just as seaweed harvesting is beginning.
And, as I also predicted - March 27th post "Radiation in Fish?" which is now 40 posts ago, abnormally high levels of radiation have turned up in seafood in the Pacific waters near the Fukushima plant. But but so far they have only been detected in only one species of fish. But I can promise you that more will be found - especially in fish that are predators, eating contaminated smaller fish (as I blogged earlier) and in fish from lakes and probably rivers as well. Longer term, radiocaesium rather than iodine will be of more concern.
The trouble is that people who eat fish and seaweed from those waters have no way of knowing which fish is contaminated, and which seaweed is contaminated. On the positive side, a few meals are unlikely to hurt you.
To your good health,
TSF
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