Bioaccessibility of Fukushima-Accident-Derived Cs in Soils and the Contribution of Soil Ingestion to Radiation Doses in Children

Abstract

Ingestion of contaminated soil is one potential internal exposure pathway in areas contaminated by the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident.

Doses from this pathway can be overestimated if the availability of radioactive nuclides in soils for the gastrointestinal tract is not considered.

The concept of bioaccessibility has been adopted to evaluate this availability based on in vitro tests.

This study evaluated the bioaccessibility of radioactive cesium from soils via the physiologically-based extraction test (PBET) and the extractability of those via an extraction test with 1 mol/L of hydrochloric acid (HCl).

The bioaccessibility obtained in the PBET was 5.3% ± 1%, and the extractability in the tests with HCl was 16% ± 3%. The bioaccessibility was strongly correlated with the extractability. This result indicates the possibility that the extractability in HCl can be used as a good predictor of the bioaccessibility with PBET.

In addition, we assessed the doses to children from the ingestion of soil via hand-to-mouth activity based on our PBET results using a probabilistic approach considering the spatial distribution of radioactive cesium in Date City in Fukushima Prefecture and the interindividual differences in the surveyed amounts of soil ingestion in Japan.

The results of this assessment indicate that even if children were to routinely ingest a large amount of soil with relatively high contamination, the radiation doses from this pathway are negligible compared with doses from external exposure owing to deposited radionuclides in Fukushima Prefecture.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/risa.12694/full

1.This Month

Radiation Containment A New Concern In Russian Nuclear Incident | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC

Fukushima 2020 Olympics Nightmare: Is PM Abe Criminally Insane?

Accelerating Sea-Level Rise with Increase in Extreme Weather Frequency, Severity, and Duration

Arctic-Sea Ice Collapse: Greenland Vulnerability; Global Sea-Level Rise; Extreme Weather Mayhem

How the viewing public was ‘protected’ from seeing what the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombing did to people

Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the cutting room floor https://thebulletin.org/2019/08/hiroshima-and-nagasaki-on-the-cutting-room-floor/ By Thomas Gaulkin, August 5, 2019 Seventy-four years after nuclear weapons were first and last used in war, it can be challenging to conceive of the devastation they cause. But even in the immediate months after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, news accounts offered a view of ingenuity and destruction that often elided the human cost.

The newsreels below [on original] were mainly screened to audiences in 1946 and 1947 and detail the destructive force of the explosions almost entirely through excited accounts of the structural damage to the cities. There’s occasional mention of the lost city populations and the scientific knowledge to be gained from studying their casualties, but hardly any description of what people actually suffered, let alone personal accounts. It’s instructive to look at and listen to these reports today, and contemplate what is missing.

The 12-minute reel below was produced by the US War Department in 1946. “Tale of Two Cities” makes selective use of film that was confiscated from a Japanese filmmaker, Akira Iwasaki—though you wouldn’t know that from the narration, which boasts that “army cameramen have found and filmed pictorial evidence that tells in twisted steel and stone the effect of death-dealing atomic power.” (Some twenty years later, historian Eric Barnouw obtained more of Iwasaki’s footage and produced a remarkably different narrative that documented the horrible physical impact of the attacks on Hiroshima’s citizens.)

Contrasted with the triumphant tone of the news/propaganda made for 1940s audiences, silence changes everything. Made public only decades later, the two films below —one beginning with footage of wounded victims, the other, a full-color glimpse of survivors picking up the pieces of the ruined city—report what those above do not, without a single word.

PETITION

Free Julian Assange, before it’s too late. Sign to STOP the USA Extradition

nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope