4 ms·
And as a result of the Chernobyl accident, southern Germany is sufficently contaminated, that food from the forests, like mushrooms and wild boar are still not
by _ph_ 8y ago
And as a result of the Chernobyl accident, southern Germany is sufficently contaminated, that food from the forests, like mushrooms and wild boar are still not completely safe to consume. Each killed animal has to be checked with a radiation detector, whether its radiation is low enough for it to be eaten, otherwise it has to be disposed as radioactive contaminated.
With Fukushima, it was increadible luck that e.g. Tokyo didn't get contaminated. The consequences if that had happened don't need to be described. So far, most of the contamination ended up in the ocean, the pacific ocean is really large, so the contamination got quite diluted. We don't know though, whether it doesn't come back to haunt us in some so far unexpected way.
- acidburnNSA 8y agoCan we get a citation on the unsafe food in Germany from Chernobyl? That flies in the face of a lot of current progress in understanding the health effects of low-dose radiation. Precisely how high above natural background radiation levels is the stuff in Germany?
- _ph_ 8y agoSure, here you are: https://www.bfs.de/DE/themen/ion/umwelt/lebensmittel/pilze-wildbret/pilze-wildbret.html https://www.bfs.de/DE/themen/ion/umwelt/lebensmittel/pilze-w... The short version is, that mushrooms accumulate cesium-137 which contaminates the soil in Bavarian forests. Equally affected are animals eating the mushrooms, mainly wild boar.
- acidburnNSA 8y agoCan you read it? I'm looking for quantitative data and see: "Belastung von 0,008 Millisievert zur Folge." If this is 8 microsieverts... what's the timescale? 8 microsieverts is quite small compared to everyday things like cosmic rays [1]. [1] https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/
- detaro 8y agoIt's for a 200g portion of (relatively highly contaminated) mushrooms, not a timescale.
- godelski 8y agoI'm going to save everyone some time here. acidburnNSA is a reactor scientist (he pops up in most of these nuclear threads). He's leading you on because your information is bad. Fact is that food didn't get to dangerous levels. (I'd trust the domain expert) Pulling from __ph__'s link (and a google translate). > The consumption of 200 grams of mushrooms containing 3,000 becquerels of cesium-137 per kilogram results in a load of 0.008 millisieverts. This corresponds to the radiation exposure during a flight from Frankfurt to Gran Canaria. > In Germany, it is not permitted to market foods with a radio cesium content of more than 600 becquerels per kilogram. For self-consumption, this restriction does not apply. (may notice here how overly cautious we tend to be with radioactive dosages.) > If venison or wild mushrooms are consumed in normal amounts, the additional radiation exposure is comparatively low, but avoidable. To summarize the article: Wild mushrooms and some wild life may have higher than normal radiation levels. Take caution if you intend to consume vast amounts of quantities. You'll probably be fine, but why risk? If you are only taking "normal" amounts then there is no concern.
- detaro 8y agoI can read the article, I was merely providing the information asked for and letting people come to their own conclusion.
- _ph_ 8y agoThe website I linked is the federal agency for nuclear safety. Depends entirely what you mean by "dangerous levels". It is contaminated enough, that mushrooms from the forests are not allowed to be sold as food. Yes, a single serving won't have a significant impact on your health, but it is recommended not to eat much of them. The situation is worse with some wild boar, which eat a lot of those mushrooms and accumulate cesioum over many years. And perhaps a relevant information: the Bavarian forests are about 600 miles from the Chernobyl site.