Nuclear « nuclear-news

Dr. Timothy Mousseau reports the decline of organisms in contaminated areas

Contrary to the mass media newsroom stories on the abundance of wildlife in Chernobyl exclusion zone, Dr. Timothy Mousseau reports the decline of organisms in contaminated areas. Result of the technological stupidity and ignorance of the mankind!

Watched the video:

https://vimeo.com/164193914

April 28, 2016 Posted by dunrenard | Nuclear | Chernobyl | Leave a comment

Blind mice and bird brains: the silent spring of Chernobyl and Fukushima

400384

Radioactivity warning sign on the hill at the east end of Chernobyl’s Red Forest, so called due to the characteristic hue of the pine trees killed by high levels of radiation after the disaster

Evolutionary biologist Timothy Mousseau and his colleagues have published 90 studies that prove beyond all doubt the deleterious genetic and developmental effects on wildlife of exposure to radiation from both the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear disasters, writes Linda Pentz Gunter. But all that peer-reviewed science has done little to dampen the ‘official’ perception of Chernobyl’s silent forests as a thriving nature reserve.

Dr Timothy Mousseau has published more than 90 peer reviewed articles in scientific journals, related to the effects of radiation in natural populations (and more than 200 publications in total).

He has spent 16 years looking at the effects on wildlife and the ecosystem of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

He and his colleagues have also spent the last five years studying how non-human biota is faring in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdowns in Japan.

But none of this work has received anything like the high profile publicity afforded the ‘findings’ in the 2006 Chernobyl Forum report which claimed the Chernobyl zone “has become a wildlife sanctuary”, and a subsequent article published in Current Biology in 2015 that said wildlife was “thriving” around Chernobyl.

“I suppose everyone loves a Cinderella story”, speculated Mousseau, an evolutionary biologist based at the University of South Carolina. “They want that happy ending.” But Mousseau felt sure the moment he read the Forum report, which, he noted, “contained few scientific citations”, that the findings “could not possibly be true.”

Ninety articles later, Mousseau and his research partners from around the world are able to demonstrate definitively and scientifically that non-human biota in both the Chernobyl zone and around Fukushima, are very far indeed from flourishing.

Far from flourishing around Chernobyl, birds and animals are fading

What Mousseau found was not unexpected given the levels of radiation in these areas and what is already known about the medical effects of such long-term exposures. Birds and rodents had a high frequency of tumors.

“Cancers are the first thing we think about”, Mousseau said. “We looked at birds and mice. In areas of higher radiation, the frequency of tumors is higher.” The research team has found mainly liver and bladder tumors in the voles and tumors on the head, body and wings of the birds studied, he said.

But Mousseau wanted to look beyond cancers, which is what everyone expects to find and what researchers had looked for, but only in humans. There were few wildlife studies, a fact Mousseau found surprising, given nature’s ability to act as a sentinel for likely impending human health impacts.

Mousseau and his fellow researchers found cataracts in birds and rodents. Male birds had a high rate of sterility. And the brains of birds were smaller. All of these are known outcomes from radiation exposure.

“Cataracts in birds is a problem”, Mousseau said. “A death sentence.”

Mental retardation has been found among children exposed to radiation in utero. Mousseau and colleagues discovered the same pattern in the birds they studied. “Birds already have small brains, so a smaller brain size is a definite disadvantage”, he said.

Almost 40% of male birds examined were sterile

There were also just fewer animals in general. “There were many fewer mammals, birds and insects in areas of higher radiation”, Mousseau said. And they had their hunch as to why.

He and his colleagues extracted sperm from the male birds they caught and were shocked to find that “up to 40% of male birds in the radiologically hottest areas were sterile.”

The birds’ sperm were either deformed or dead. None would be able to reproduce. The discovery, he said, was “not at all surprising. These are the levels of radiation known to influence reproduction. At the same time, there is no safe level of radiation below which there aren’t detectable effects.”

Fewer birds have already been observed in the contaminated areas around Fukushima, said Mousseau. “Although it’s too early to assess the long term impact on abundance and diversity around Fukushima, there are very few butterflies and many birds have declined in the more contaminated areas. If abundance is compressed, biodiversity will follow.”

Five years into the still on-going Fukushima disaster, Mousseau’s research continues to uncover “a dramatic reduction in the number of birds and numbers of species in areas of high radiation”, he said.

At least in that region, Japan could be headed toward a Silent Spring.

No doubt that Fukushima and Chernobyl are causing genetic damage

The consequences of radiation exposure, says Mousseau, “will have a tremendous impact on the quality of life of these animals, and the length of quality of life. It need not necessarily be cancers”, that cause these damages he said. “There is no doubt that the levels of radiation in Chernobyl and Fukushima generate genetic damage.”

A study by Mousseau et al. that did get some attention, most notably from the Smithsonian Institution, found disturbing changes in the decomposition of organic matter in the Chernobyl Zone.

Fungi and other microorganisms are decomposing at half the usual rate. Trees fall but rot unusually slowly. Leaf matter piles up without much decay, creating a tinder-box risk in the event of forest fires, several of which have occurred in the Zone.

“There is an accumulation of highly radioactive organic matter” in these areas, Mousseau said. All of this could be lofted into the air during a forest fire and redistributed as radiological contamination elsewhere, he points out.

Indeed, a map in an April 2006 edition of National Geographic Magazine, shows that this has already happened, expanding the Chernobyl Zone from its original 30km radius. “High-altitude winds swept radioactive smoke and ash across a wider area, which scientists traced from soil levels of cesium 137, a long-lived isotope,” read the map’s caption. Major forest fires in the Chernobyl Zone in 2010 and 2015 have likely worsened the situation.

While the radiation spread by Chernobyl fell mostly on land, where it is easier to study the medical effects on humans and animals, the initial Fukushima radioactive plume blew mainly out to sea. And since 2011 when the accident began, further dumping of radioactive water into the Pacific has occurred.

A responsibility to protect the environment and wildlife, not just man

This has led to speculation – and some unscientific and alarmist rumors – that sea life in the Pacific is collapsing due to the Fukushima radiation.

“Catastrophic marine events started 40-50 years ago”, Mousseau points out. “Bird populations in the Pacific were in decline long before Fukushima.”

One important cause, says Mousseau, is “plastics in the environment that are consumed by marine animals which were in downward spirals long before the Fukushima accident.” Marine population decline has likely also been “compounded by climate change”, he says.

Indeed, Mousseau, who grew up on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, remembers the local harbor encrusted with star fish when he was a child. Recently, when he took his son there, he found none.

Fukushima cannot necessarily be blamed, as some would wish, but the compounding and potentially synergistic effect of radiation in the Pacific could still be taking its toll, Mousseau avowed.

“We don’t know how different environmental stresses interact with each other”, he said. “They could be synergistic and related. There is almost no research on this even in the Pacific off Fukushima – virtually nothing on the biological consequences in really contaminated areas.”

With “little real science” to rely on, Mousseau says, “we will never know” just how much marine damage the Fukushima disaster may do.

He finds the continued lack of other independent animal studies in radioactive zones frustrating. “We have a responsibility to protect the environment and wildlife, not just man”, he said. It may be expensive and difficult to conduct these kinds of studies, but, says Mousseau, “that is not an excuse.”

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2987598/blind_mice_and_bird_brains_the_silent_spring_of_chernobyl_and_fukushima.html

April 28, 2016 Posted by dunrenard | Nuclear | Chernobyl, Contamination, Fukushima continuing, radiation, Tim Mousseau | Leave a comment

At Chernobyl and Fukushima, radioactivity has seriously harmed wildlife

image-20160413-25397-867nu9

White storks on road near Chernobyl, Ukraine. Many parts of the Chernobyl region have low radioactivity levels and serve as refuges for plants and animals. Tim Mousseau, Author provided

The largest nuclear disaster in history occurred 30 years ago at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in what was then the Soviet Union. The meltdown, explosions and nuclear fire that burned for 10 days injected enormous quantities of radioactivity into the atmosphere and contaminated vast areas of Europe and Eurasia. The International Atomic Energy Agency estimates that Chernobyl released 400 times more radioactivity into the atmosphere than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

Radioactive cesium from Chernobyl can still be detected in some food products today. And in parts of central, eastern and northern Europe many animals, plants and mushrooms still contain so much radioactivity that they are unsafe for human consumption.

The first atomic bomb exploded at Alamogordo, New Mexico more than 70 years ago. Since then, more than 2,000 atomic bombs have been tested, injecting radioactive materials into the atmosphere. And over 200 small and large accidents have occurred at nuclear facilities. But experts and advocacy groups are still fiercely debating the health and environmental consequences of radioactivity.

However, in the past decade population biologists have made considerable progress in documenting how radioactivity affects plants, animals and microbes. My colleagues and I have analyzed these impacts at Chernobyl, Fukushima and naturally radioactive regions of the planet.

Our studies provide new fundamental insights about consequences of chronic, multigenerational exposure to low-dose ionizing radiation. Most importantly, we have found that individual organisms are injured by radiation in a variety of ways. The cumulative effects of these injuries result in lower population sizes and reduced biodiversity in high-radiation areas.

Broad impacts at Chernobyl

Radiation exposure has caused genetic damage and increased mutation rates in many organisms in the Chernobyl region. So far, we have found little convincing evidence that many organisms there are evolving to become more resistant to radiation.

Organisms’ evolutionary history may play a large role in determining how vulnerable they are to radiation. In our studies, species that have historically shown high mutation rates, such as the barn swallow (Hirundo rustica), the icterine warbler (Hippolais icterina) and the Eurasian blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla), are among the most likely to show population declines in Chernobyl. Our hypothesis is that species differ in their ability to repair DNA, and this affects both DNA substitution rates and susceptibility to radiation from Chernobyl.

Much like human survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs, birds and mammals at Chernobyl have cataracts in their eyes and smaller brains. These are direct consequences of exposure to ionizing radiation in air, water and food. Like some cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy, many of the birds have malformed sperm. In the most radioactive areas, up to 40 percent of male birds are completely sterile, with no sperm or just a few dead sperm in their reproductive tracts during the breeding season.

Tumors, presumably cancerous, are obvious on some birds in high-radiation areas. So are developmental abnormalities in some plants and insects.

Chernobyl reactor No. 4 building, encased in steel and concrete to limit radioactive contamination.

Given overwhelming evidence of genetic damage and injury to individuals, it is not surprising that populations of many organisms in highly contaminated areas have shrunk. In Chernobyl, all major groups of animals that we surveyed were less abundant in more radioactive areas. This includes birds, butterflies, dragonflies, bees, grasshoppers, spiders and large and small mammals.

Not every species shows the same pattern of decline. Many species, including wolves, show no effects of radiation on their population density. A few species of birds appear to be more abundant in more radioactive areas. In both cases, higher numbers may reflect the fact that there are fewer competitors or predators for these species in highly radioactive areas.

Moreover, vast areas of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone are not presently heavily contaminated, and appear to provide a refuge for many species. One report published in 2015 described game animals such as wild boar and elk as thriving in the Chernobyl ecosystem. But nearly all documented consequences of radiation in Chernobyl and Fukushima have found that individual organisms exposed to radiation suffer serious harm.

Map of the Chernobyl region of Ukraine. Note the highly heterogeneous deposition patterns of radioactivity in the region. Areas of low radioactivity provide refuges for wildlife in the region.

There may be exceptions. For example, substances called antioxidants can defend against the damage to DNA, proteins and lipids caused by ionizing radiation. The levels of antioxidants that individuals have available in their bodies may play an important role in reducing the damage caused by radiation. There is evidence that some birds may have adapted to radiation by changing the way they use antioxidants in their bodies.

Parallels at Fukushima

Recently we have tested the validity of our Chernobyl studies by repeating them in Fukushima, Japan. The 2011 power loss and core meltdown at three nuclear reactors there released about one-tenth as much radioactive material as the Chernobyl disaster.

Overall, we have found similar patterns of declines in abundance and diversity of birds, although some species are more sensitive to radiation than others. We have also found declines in some insects, such as butterflies, which may reflect the accumulation of harmful mutations over multiple generations.

Our most recent studies at Fukushima have benefited from more sophisticated analyses of radiation doses received by animals. In our most recent paper, we teamed up with radioecologists to reconstruct the doses received by about 7,000 birds. The parallels we have found between Chernobyl and Fukushima provide strong evidence that radiation is the underlying cause of the effects we have observed in both locations.

Some members of the radiation regulatory community have been slow to acknowledge how nuclear accidents have harmed wildlife. For example, the U.N.-sponsored Chernobyl Forum instigated the notion that the accident has had a positive impact on living organisms in the exclusion zone because of the lack of human activities. A more recent report of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation predicts minimal consequences for the biota animal and plant life of the Fukushima region.

Unfortunately these official assessments were largely based on predictions from theoretical models, not on direct empirical observations of the plants and animals living in these regions. Based on our research, and that of others, it is now known that animals living under the full range of stresses in nature are far more sensitive to the effects of radiation than previously believed. Although field studies sometimes lack the controlled settings needed for precise scientific experimentation, they make up for this with a more realistic description of natural processes.

Our emphasis on documenting radiation effects under “natural” conditions using wild organisms has provided many discoveries that will help us to prepare for the next nuclear accident or act of nuclear terrorism. This information is absolutely needed if we are to protect the environment not just for man, but also for the living organisms and ecosystem services that sustain all life on this planet.

There are currently more than 400 nuclear reactors in operation around the world, with 65 new ones under construction and another 165 on order or planned. All operating nuclear power plants are generating large quantities of nuclear waste that will need to be stored for thousands of years to come. Given this, and the probability of future accidents or nuclear terrorism, it is important that scientists learn as much as possible about the effects of these contaminants in the environment, both for remediation of the effects of future incidents and for evidenced-based risk assessment and energy policy development.

https://theconversation.com/at-chernobyl-and-fukushima-radioactivity-has-seriously-harmed-wildlife-57030

April 28, 2016 Posted by dunrenard | Nuclear | Chernobyl, Fukushima continuing | Leave a comment

It’s not just cancer! Radiation, genomic instability and heritable genetic damage

Chris Busby – 17th March 2016

Cancer is just one of of the outcomes of the genetic damage inflicted by nuclear radiation, writes Chris Busby, and perhaps one of the least important. Of far greater long term significance is the broad-scale mutation of the human genome, and those of other species, and the resulting genomic instability that causes cascades of heritable mutations through the generations.

Those who fear the effects of radiation always focus on cancer. But the most frightening and serious consequences of radiation are genetic.

Cancer is just one small bleak reflection, a flash of cold light from a facet of the iceberg of genetic damage to life on Earth constructed from human folly, power-lust and stupidity.

Cancer is a genetic disease expressed at the cellular level. But genetic effects are transmitted across the generations.

It was Herman Joseph Muller, an American scientist, who discovered the most serious effects of ionizing radiation – hereditary defects in the descendants of exposed parents – in the 1920s. He exposed fruit flies – drosophila – to X-rays and found malformations and other disorders in the following generations.

He concluded from his investigations that low dose exposure, and therefore even natural background radiation, is mutagenic and there is no harmless dose range for heritable effects or for cancer induction. His work was honoured by the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1946.

In the 1950s Muller warned about the effects on the human genetic pool caused by the production low level radioactive contamination from atmospheric tests. I have his original 1950 report, which is a rare item now.

Muller, as a famous expert in radiation, was designated as a speaker at the Conference, ‘Atoms for Peace’ in Geneva in 1955 where the large scale use of nuclear energy (too cheap to meter) was announced by President Eisenhower. But when the organisers became aware that Muller had warned about the deterioration of the human gene pool by the contamination of the planet from the weapon test fallout, his invitation was cancelled.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

The protective legislation of western governments does, of course, concede that radiation has such genetic effects. The laws regulating exposure are based on the risk model of the International Commission on Radiological Protection, the ICRP.

The rules say that no one is allowed to receive more than 1mSv of dose in a year from man-made activities. The ICRP’s scientific model for heritable effects is based on mice; this is because ICRP states that there is no evidence that radiation causes any heritable effects in humans.

The dose required to double the risk of heritable damage according to the ICRP is more than 1000mSv. This reliance on mice has followed from the studies of the offspring of those who were present in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the Japanese/ US Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC).

These studies were begun in 1952 and assembled groups of people in the bombed cities to compare cancer rates and also birth outcomes in those exposed at different levels according to their distance from the position of the bomb detonation, the hypocentre. The entire citadel of radiation risk is built upon this ABCC rock.

But the rock was constructed with smoke and mirrors and everything about the epidemiology is false. There have been a number of criticisms of the A-Bomb Lifespan Studies of cancer: it was a survivor population, doses were external, residual contamination was ignored, it began seven years after the event, the original zero dose control group was abandoned as being “too healthy”, and many others.

But we are concerned here with the heritable effects, the birth defects, the congenital malformations, the miscarriages and stillbirths. The problem here is that for heritable damage effects to show up, there have to be births. As you increase the exposures to radiation, you quickly obtain sterility and there are no pregnancies. We found this in the nuclear test veterans.

Then at lower doses, damaged sperm results in damaged foetuses and miscarriages. When both mother and father are exposed, there are miscarriages and stillbirths before you see any birth defects. So the dose response relation is not linear. At the higher doses there are no effects. The effects all appear at the lowest doses.

Bad epidemiology is easily manipulated

As far as the ABCC studies are concerned, there is another serious (and I would say dishonest) error in the epidemiology. Those people discarded their control population in favour of using the low dose group as a control.

This is such bad epidemiology that it should leave any honest reviewer breathless. But there were no reviewers. Or at least no-one seemed to care. Perhaps they didn’t dig deeply enough. In passing, the same method is now being used to assess risk in the huge INWORKS nuclear worker studies and no-one has raised this point there either.

Anyway, the ABCC scientists in charge of the genetic studies found the same levels of adverse birth outcomes in their exposed and their control groups, and concluded that there was no effect from the radiation.

Based on this nonsense, ICRP writes in their latest 2007 risk model, ICRP103, Appendix B.2.01, that “Radiation induced heritable disease has not been demonstrated in human populations.”

But it has. If we move away from this USA controlled, nuclear military complex controlled A-Bomb study and look in the real world we find that Muller was right to be worried. The radioactive contamination of the planet has killed tens of millions of babies, caused a huge increase in infertility, and increased the genetic burden of the human race and life on earth.

And now the truth is out!

In January of this year Prof. Inge Schmitz-Feuerhake, of the University of Bremen, Dr Sebastian Pflugbeil of the German Society for Radioprotection and I published a Special Topic paper in the prestigious peer-review journal Environmental Health and Toxicology. The title is: ‘Genetic Radiation Risks – a neglected topic in the Low Dose debate‘.

In this paper we collected together all the evidence which has been published outside the single Japanese ABCC study in order to calculate the true genetic effects of radiation exposure. The outcome was sobering, but not unexpected.

Using evidence ranging from Chernobyl to the nuclear Test Veterans to the offspring of radiographers we showed clearly that a dose of 1mSv from internal contamination was able to cause a 50% increase in congenital malformations. This identifies an error in the ICRP model and in the current legislation of a factor of 1,000. And we write this down. The conclusion of the paper states:

“Genetically induced malformations, cancers, and numerous other health effects in the children of populations who were exposed to low doses of ionizing radiation have been unequivocally demonstrated in scientific investigations.

“Using data from Chernobyl effects we find a new Excess Relative Risk (ERR) for Congenital malformations of 0.5 per mSv at 1mSv falling to 0.1 per mSv at 10mSv exposure and thereafter remaining roughly constant. This is for mixed fission products as defined though external exposure to Cs-137.

“Results show that current radiation risk models fail to predict or explain the many observations and should be abandoned. Further research and analysis of previous data is suggested, but prior assumptions of linear dose response, assumptions that internal exposures can be modelled using external risk factors, that chronic and acute exposures give comparable risks and finally dependence on interpretations of the high dose ABCC studies are all seen to be unsafe procedures.”

Radiation causes genomic instability

Our paper is available on the web as a free download, so you can see what we wrote and follow up the 80 or so references we used to construct the case.

Most of the evidence is from effects reported in countries contaminated by the Chernobyl accident, not only in Belarus and Ukraine but in wider Europe where doses were less than 1mSv. Other evidence we referred to was from the offspring of the nuclear test veterans.

In a study I published in 2014 of the offspring of members of the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association (BNTVA) we saw a 9-fold excess of congenital disease in the children but also, and unexpectedly, an eight-fold excess in the grandchildren. This raises a new and frightening spectre not anticipated by Herman Muller.

In the last 15 years it has become clear that radiation causes genomic instability: experiments in the laboratory and animal studies show that radiation exposure throws some kind of genetic switch which causes a non-specific increase in general mutation rates.

Up until these genomic instability discoveries it was thought that genetic processes followed the laws of Gregor Mendel: there were specific dominant and recessive gene mutations that were passed down the generation and became diluted through a binomial process as offspring married away.

But radiation scientists and cancer researchers could not square the background mutation rate with the increased risks of cancer with age: the numbers didn’t fit. The discovery of the genomic instability process was the answer to the puzzle: it introduces enough random mutations to explain the observations.

It is this that supplies the horrifying explanation for the continuing high risk of birth defects in Fallujah and other areas where the exposures occurred ten to twenty years ago. Similar several generation effects have been seen in animals from Chernobyl.

Neonatal mortality in the nuclear bomb era

So where does that leave us? What can we do with this? What can we conclude? How can this change anything? Let’s start by looking at the effects of the biggest single injection of these radioactive contaminants, the atmospheric weapons tests of the period 1952 to 1963.

If these caused increases in birth defects and genetic damage we should see something in the data. We do. The results are chilling. If babies are damaged they die at or shortly before birth. This will show up in the vital statistics data of any country which collects and publishes it.

In Fig 1 (above right) I show a graph of the first day (neonatal) mortality rates in the USA from 1936 to 1985. You can see that as social conditions improved there was a fall in the rates between the beginning and end of the period, and we can obtain this by calculating what the background should have been using a statistical process called regression.

The expected backgound is shown as a thin blue line. Also superimposed is the concentration of Strontium-90 in milk (in red) and its concentration in the bones of dead infants (in blue). The graph shows first day neonatal mortality in the USA; it is taken from a paper by Canadian paediatrician Robin Whyte (woman) in the British Medical Journal in 1992. This paper shows the same effect in neonatal (1 month) mortality and stillbirths in the USA and also the United Kingdom. The doses from the Strontium-90 were less than 0.5mSv.

This is in line with what we found in our paper from Chernobyl and the other examples of human exposures. The issue was first raised by the late Prof Ernest Sternglass, one of the first of the radiation warrior-scientists and a friend of mine. The cover-ups and denials of these effects are part of the biggest public health scandal in human history.

It continues and has come to a venue near you: our study of Hinkley Point showed significant increased infant mortality downwind of the plant at Burnham on Sea as I wrote in The Ecologist.

It’s official – genetic damage in children is an indicator of harmful exposures to the father

As to what we can do with this new peer-reviewed evidence we can (and we shall) put it before the Nuclear Test Veterans case in the Pensions Appeals hearings in the Royal Courts of Justice which is tabled for three weeks from June 14th 2016 before a tribunal headed by high court judge Sir Nicholas Blake.

I represent two of the appellants in this hearing and will bring in the genetic damage in the children and grandchildren as evidence of genetic damage in the father.

We are calling Inge Schmitz-Feuerhake, the author of the genetic paper, as one expert witness; the judge has conceded that genetic damage in the children is an indicator of harmful exposures to the father. He has made a disclosure order to the University of Dundee to release the veteran questionnaires. They have.

Finally, I must share with you a window into the mind-set of the false scientists who work for the military and nuclear operation. As the fallout Strontium-90 built up in milk and in childrens’ bones and was being measured, they renamed the units of contamination, (picoCuries Sr-90 per gram of Calcium) ‘Sunshine Units’.

Can you imagine? I would ship them all to Nuremberg for that alone.

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2987395/its_not_just_cancer_radiation_genomic_instability_and_heritable_genetic_damage.html

The paper: ‘Genetic Radiation Risks – a neglected topic in the Low Dose debate‘ is published in Environmental Health and Toxicology.

March 17, 2016 Posted by dunrenard | Nuclear | Cancers, Chris Busby, Genetic Damages | Leave a comment

Cesium and Potassium

From Paul Langley

Nukers are Bananas!!

So eat them up!!

A proof that cesium in any form is a toxin not a nutrient:

Nukers promoting contaminated food – the falsehoods of the Potassium excuse

I have blogged about this before. Attempts at selling contaminated food in the market of people’s lives by nuclear advocates has to stop in Japan and everywhere.

It will take me the weekend to finish this post as I gather the historic and current sources which show the Potassium equivalent dose (which the industry calls the banana equivalent dose) is a false, incorrect, wrong and deceptive fallacy.

In the interim, this wiki article explains the fallacy in brief: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose

In brief: radio potassium (K40) is much a very small proportion of all potassium. It is far less radioactive per unit weight (amount, physical dose) than any biologically active fission product.

Potassium in any form is dangerous to the heart in excess, but potassium is a needed nutrient.
The body maintains a potassium balance therefore. This danger to the heart is a bio-chemical effect. The radiological nature of radio cesium (a potassium analogue) poses an additional threat to the heart and other soft tissue. The body maintains the appropriate its potassium balance by excreting potassium. Eating potassium rich food results in excretion of potassium, maintaining the body’s appropriate potassium balance. Eating a banana in fact results in cytokine release, and other biological responses. This is due to the chemical composition of the banana which contain precursors which, according to some people, are radio-protective.

On the other hand, cesium and strontium are not needed by the body in any form. In fact, strontium mimics calcium even though its bio chemistry is not exactly the same (analogue = similar to but not the same as the original). There are about half a dozen different isotopes of radio-strontium. The body is able to discriminate between strontium and calcium at the gut wall and prefers calcium. If the dietary calcium is adequate, the body is able to preferentially absorb calcium over strontium in a ratio of about 4 : 1.

Once absorbed, strontium moves to bone and other places which have a biological demand for calcium. In bone, strontium, which has a large crystal structure than calcium, binds more loosely to bone than calcium. It tends to deposit on the outside of bone structure. (Pecher, 1942)

During pregnancy strontium moves from bone to fetus with the bulk of movement occurring later in pregnancy.

During breast feeding, strontium moves from bone to breast tissue and is excreted into the milk.(Erf and Pecher, 1940).

When uncontaminated orphaned baby mice were given to strontium contaminated mother mice to suckle, the previously uncontaminated mice “became more radioactive than the (surrogate) mothers” Pecher, 1941.

The potassium cycle in humans is no excuse for nuclear authorities anywhere on the planet to claim any benefit or natural precedent for the marketing of nuclear industry emissions contaminated food.

The fission products are not nutrients. Do not eat them. Nuclear industry promises to keep its radioactive sources sealed. When nuclear industry invariably fails in this undertaking, it turns around and claims the residue of its pollution is like a banana.

Crap. The residue is like the residue of a rad weapon. Fact. Its the same stuff. Terrorists do not attempt to arm themselves with bananas. They are not dangerous.

Radio Strontium, Radio Iodine, Radio cesium have NO PLACE in food. Nuke is not clean, it is not green and it relies on lies it has concocted over decades. Despite the fact that nuclear industry has been a beneficiary of fundamental research into these matters, conducted at taxpayers expense, over many decades. It is as if nuclear industry is blind to the actual findings of Projects Gabriel, Sunshine and the Manhattan Project’s Health Division Findings even though these things were participated in by private nuclear corporations at the time.)

“Equilibrium Dose” – in a constantly radiologically contaminated environment, the equilibrium dose of a given fission product is the maximum amount of the substance which remains in the body as a result of the uptake/excretion cycle. Risk increases as a function of time as well as uptake. If the shit is quickly cleaned up, if the source of emissions is stopped then risk is reduced. The reactors at Fukushima continue to vent, previous deposition is washed down from the mountains of Fukusihma Prefecture. (see previous post).

The equilibrium dose of the fission products are all dangerous.

Bio-accumulation is a fact which confounds official attempts at “diluting” radio-contamination by spreading them around.

The more nuclear industry claims eating plutonium, strontium, cesium, iodine and other fuel and fission products is ok because bananas exist and because the potassium is a needed nutrient, the more I consider them to be blatant liars.

The experience and reports of Livermore National Labs in its attempts to remove radio cesium from food grown in the Bikini Atoll further reveal the nuclear lie. The main means of reducing radio cesium from food there involves the use of potassium fertilizer to displace cesium in the crops. It is of some, but limited success. As less than 1% of potassium is the radioactive isotopes of potassium and as the radioactive isotopes of potassium are much less radioactive per unit weight than radio cesium, there is an obvious radiological importance in using potassium to displace cesium from food.
see https://marshallislands.llnl.gov/bikini.php If there is no benefit in using potassium in an attempt to displace radio cesium from food in the Bikini Atoll, why has the American taxpayer spent untold billions attempting to do just that?

If nuclear industry tempts you with the idea that radio cesium is nutrient, dont believe them. They are asking you to take on an internal radio cesium dose in addition to your natural radio potassium dose, to take on an addition radio strontium dose where one does not exist in nature (no form of radio strontium exists in nature, there are about 6 radio strontium fission isotopes), strontium is not a nutrient and baby mice fed stable strontium instead of calcium die (Pecher `1941), There is no natural radio iodine dose. Eating radio Iodine damages the thyroid and consequently the rest of the endocrine system. The endocrine system is needed by the body for many reasons, including it’s important role in fighting the effects of radiation exposure.

There is no natural equilibrium doses of radio strontium, radio cesium, or radio iodine. (and so on, I aint writing a book here). The nuclear industry talks in absolutes to main its propaganda points. Let’s test that.

If radio cesium is ok because, as they say, radio potassium (which makes up 1% of the needed daily uptake of potassium), is in food, well what would happen if all the potassium in the world’s diet was turned to cesium? All mammalian life on the planet would die firstly because CESIUM IS NOT A NUTRIENT and secondly all mammalian life would die due to the radiation dose.

See Comar et al. http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.ns.15.120165.001135?journalCode=nucl.1

The whole of the history of nuclear has been dominated by the fact that the biologically active fission products contaminate the food supply after they enter the biosphere.

This fact has been known for a very long time. Realizing that nuclear devices – in the first instance, bombs and reactors – emitted both photon radiation – gamma and x rays, and particulate radiation – alpha, beta and neutrons – the first job of the Health Division of the Manhattan Project was to study the nature of the threats posed. Workers located close into a reactor core were exposed to gamma, x and neutron rays. These are very penetrating. They were also exposed to the physical rods – or slugs as they were called then. The hazards of extracting plutonium from fission uranium slugs included the possibility of breathing in or ingesting etc plutonium and fission product dust.

Hamilton was contracted to study the metabolism of the fission products. He was contracted to find the “radiations” which were “effective against the enemy”. He was contracted to find protective methods for US troops and the US population should the enemy attack the US with nuclear weapons. (The contract resulted from the aims defined by the report “Metallurgical Project, A.H. Compton, Project Leader, Health, Radiation
and Protection, R.S. Stone, M.D., Division Director, Health Division Program, May 10, 1943”, document number 717325, Report CH-63255-A, Originally Secret, pp. 2, gives the following additional very significant Scope:
“4. Evaluation of Effectiveness of Radioactive Materials as a Military Weapon. A) Defense -Tolerance of and protection of troops and civilians’. B) Offense – Radiations needed to be effective.”)

In 1943, Hamilton reported to Stone, Groves and Oppenheimer and reported that radio strontium obtained from reactor pile fuel rods (slugs as they were then called) could be used as a weapon. The proposal called for a bomb loaded with radio strontium, which was “violently radioactive”, and packed with explosive. Such bombs, Hamilton wrote, could be used to contaminate enemy food and water supplies. (Source: Advisory
Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, ACHRE, Final Report, Chapter 11.
United States Department of Energy, 1995. Date of memos: 1943.)

Under the terms of his first contract, Hamilton regularly published reports entitled ““Metabolism of the Fission Products, Progress Report for Period Ending…” In the report for the Period Ending April 15 1944, Hamilton reported the following: “The most effective means of reducing the absorption of Sr* (any radio active isotope of strontium) from the intestinal tract is the maintenance of an adequate or high calcium intake. This may be accomplished by increased use of milk and dairy products, by taking medicinal calcium regularly or by use of bread fortified with calcium. The important factor is apparently the general
level of calcium intake rather than the amount present in the intestinal tract at the
moment.”

This finding was actually implied from data first published in the Sr/Ca ratio studies data and conclusions by Charles Pecher, 1940. (Source: Pecher, C. “Biological Investigations with Radioactive Calcium and Strontium,
Preliminary Report on the Use of Radioactive Strontium in the Treatment of
Metastatic Bone Cancer”, Contributed from the Radiation Laboratory of the
University of California, Berkeley University of California Publications in
Pharmacology. Editor: C. D. Leake, G.A. Alles, T.C. Daniels, M.H. Soley. Volume 2
No 11, pp. 117-150, plates 6-9, 3 figures in text. Submitted by Editors July 21, 1942,
Issued October 23, 1942, University of California Press, Berkeley, Cambridge
University Press, London, England. Prefatory note by C.D. Leake, editor.) pp 133.)

If Doctor Hamilton had been snatched from 1944 and had been transported to NHK TV studios in March 2011
and forced to watch the Fukushima explode and as a result of containment breach deposit portions of their
core contents over Japan and the hemisphere, he would have surely said, “Yea, that’s pretty much what I mean. What are you doing to protect the “friendlies”?”

Japanese authorities have not learnt the lessons of history. Nuclear industry knows the full facts, and yet prefers to justify its nuclear pollution on the grounds that bananas contain a lot of potassium (in dietary terms) and have a proportion of radioactive potassium. How much radioactive potassium is present naturally in all potassium and which therefore is taken up by plants and animals and consumed by humans? 0.0117%. The equilibrium dose in humans is constant, that is, eating some dietary potassium does not result in a greater amount in the body, for the body maintains an equilibrium of potassium and the excess amount is excreted. However, in the long decades following a reactor accident which results in proportions of core contents being spewed out into the country side, the biologically active fission products, including the isotopes of cesium (a potassium analogue) enter the foodchain.

This is results in an additional burden to the radio potassium normally present in food and the body. The presence of potassium in the body is not a valid excuse for nuclear industry and its shareholders to use in order to justify or minimise the consequences of their actions – actions which resulted in the contamination of the biosphere and foodchain.

Cesium is not a nutrient. Why eat it? TEPCO says so? What is TEPCO and its apologists motivation?

The hazards of non radioactive, stable, normal, ordinary, natural, non fission related cesium:
http://www.livestrong.com/article/496095-the-safety-of-cesium-chloride-food-supplements/

“In September 2009, after three such cases, the Canadian government warned Canadian consumers against taking cesium chloride because of the risk of potentially life-threatening heart arrhythmias. Patients who experience irregular heartbeat or a decrease in consciousness after taking cesium chloride should seek emergency medical treatment. There may also be a risk of heart attack associated with cesium chloride supplements.
Side Effects
Some other potential side effects of cesium chloride are seizures, loss of consciousness and electrolyte imbalances, which is a potentially dangerous condition in which the body’s chemistry is disrupted. Consuming large amounts of cesium chloride may also cause decreased appetite, nausea and diarrhea. Some researchers have reported that their laboratory mice died after taking large doses of cesium chloride, according to a 2004 report on cesium toxicity by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.” end quote, the cesium chloride is the soluble form.

The hazards of radioactive cesium:

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2012/ph241/wessells1/

“Among the many fission product nuclides, cesium 137 deserves attention because it possesses a unique combination of physical properties and historical notoriety. It is readily produced in large quantities during fission, has an intermediate half-life, decays by high-energy pathways, and is chemically reactive and highly soluble. These physical properties have made cesium 137 a dangerous legacy of major nuclear accidents such as Chernobyl, but it has also caused relatively small incidents as well….Fission of various isotopes of thorium, uranium, and plutonium all yield about 6% cesium-137. [1] This high fission yield results in an abundance of cesium-137 in spent nuclear fuel, as well as in regions contaminated by fission byproducts after nuclear accidents. [2] The large quantities of cesium-137 produced during fission events pose a persistent hazard. Its half-life of about 30 years is long enough that objects and regions contaminated by cesium-137 remain dangerous to humans for a generation or more, but it is short enough to ensure that even relatively small quantities of cesium-137 release dangerous doses of radiation (its specific radioactivity is 3.2 × 10^12 Bq/g (10 to the 12th power)). [2-4]

What is the rate of radioactivity of potassium 40, the isotope which makes up 0.012% of all potassium, both environmentally and in food? How much less that cesium 137?

Argonne National Laboratory, rate of radioactivity of Potassium isotopes:
http://www.ead.anl.gov/pub/doc/potassium.pdf

Potassium 40 (K40) Half life : 1.3 billion years. Natural abundance: 0.012% of all potassium is K40.
Radioactivity in Curies: 0.0000071 curies (per gram). Type of radiation emitted: Beta (energy 0.52 MEV), gamma energy 0.16 MeV).

Argonne National Laboratory: Rate of radioactivity of the radioactive cesium isotopes:
http://www.evs.anl.gov/pub/doc/cesium.pdf
Quote “There are 11 major radioactive isotopes of cesium. (Isotopes are different forms of an element that have the same number of protons in the nucleus but a different number of neutrons.) Only three have half-lives long
enough to warrant concern: cesium-134, cesium-135 and cesium-137. Each of these decays by emitting a
beta particle, and their half-lives range from about 2 to 2 million years. The half-lives of the other cesium isotopes are less than two weeks. Of these three, the isotope of most concern for Department of Energy (DOE)
environmental management sites and other areas is cesium-137 which has a half- life of 30 years. Its decay product, barium-137m (the “m” means metastable) stabilizes itself by emitting an energetic gamma ray with
a half-life of about 2.6 minutes. It is this decay product that makes cesium an external hazard (that is, a hazard without being taken into the body).isotope of most concern for Department of Energy (DOE) environmental management sites and other areas is cesium-137 which has a half- life of 30 years. Its decay
product, barium-137m (the “m” means metastable) stabilizes itself by emitting an energetic gamma ray with
a half-life of about 2.6 minutes. It is this decay product that makes cesium an external hazard (that is, a
hazard without being taken into the body). Cesium-135 and cesium-134 are typically of less concern because of their radiological decay characteristics. The very long half-life of cesium-135 means it has a very low specific activity, and the slow decay rate combined with its low decay energy contribute to its low hazard. Cesium-134 has a half-life of 2.1 years and decays by emitting a beta particle. The relatively small amount of cesium-134 produced more than 20 years ago would essentially all be gone today due to radioactive decay.

Where Does It Come From? Cesium is naturally present as the isotope 133 (stable) in various ores and to a lesser extent in soil. The three radioactive cesium isotopes identified above are produced by nuclear fission. When an atom of uranium-235 (or other fissile nuclide) fissions, it generally splits asymmetrically into two large fragments – fission products with mass numbers in the range of about 90 and 140 – and two or three
neutrons. (The mass number is the sum of the number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus of the atom.)
Cesium radionuclides are such fission products, with cesium-135 and cesium-137 being produced with
relatively high yields of about 7% and 6%, respectively. That is, about 7 atoms of cesium-135 and 6 atoms
of cesium-137 are produced per 100 fissions. Cesium-137 is a major radionuclide in spent nuclear fuel, high-
level radioactive wastes resulting from the processing of spent nuclear fuel, and radioactive wastes associated
with the operation of nuclear reactors and fuel reprocessing plants.

Isotope: Cs-134 half life: 2.1 yr radioactivity in curies 1,300 (per gram) Beta (energy 0.16MeV), gamma (energy 1.6 MeV).
Isotope: Cs-135 half life: 2.3 million yr radioactivity in Curies 0.0012 (per gram) Beta (energy 0.067 MeV)
Isotope: Cs-137 half life: 30 years radioactivity in Curies: 88 (per gram) Beta (energy 0.19MeV)
Ba-137m (95%) Half life: 2.6 min radioactivity in Curies: 540 million (per gram) IT Beta (energy 0.065) gamma (energy 0.60 MeV)
IT = isomeric transition, Ci = curie, g = gram, and MeV = million electron
volts; a dash indicates that the entry is not applicable. (See the companion fact
sheet on Radioactive Properties, Internal Distribution, and Risk Coefficients for
an explanation of terms and interpretation of radiation energies.) Certain
properties of barium-137m are included here because this radionuclide
accompanies the cesium decays. Values are given to two significant figures

Direct comparison of the K40 and Cs137 data:

Isotope: Cs-137 half life: 30 years, natural abundance: zero. (fission product) radioactivity in Curies: 88 (per gram) Beta (energy 0.19MeV)

As potassium and cesium end up in the same tissues, the radiation energy absorbed by those tissues from both Cs** and K40 must be ADDED TOGETHER.

Is Cesium in any form needed for life? No
Is potassium needed for life? Yes

Can cesium substitute for potassium in the body ? No. It is merely an analogue (this means it is similar but not exactly the same as potassium. (If it was exactly the same, it would be called potassium, but it isnt. Cesium is not potassium. It cannot do the same job as potassium, although it “tricks” the body into reacting to it as if it were potassium, hence it goes to the same tissues as potassium does. Thus those tissues now have the two burdens: that of the radioactivity burden of potassium k40 plus the burden of Cs137, 134 etc.

What’s a curie a measure of ?

“The Curie (symbol Ci) is a non-SI unit of radioactivity, named after Marie and Pierre Curie. It is defined as
1 Curie = 3.7 × 10^10 (10 to the 10th power) decays per second.
The SI derived unit of radioactivity is the becquerel (Bq), which equates to one decay per second. Therefore:
1 Ci = 3.7 × 10^10 Bq = 37 GBq
and
1 Bq ≅ 2.703 × 10^−11 Ci
Another commonly used measure of radioactivity is the microcurie:
1 μCi = 3.7 × 10^4 disintegrations per second = 2.22 × 10^6 disintegrations per minute”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curie

It is the mode of decay which determines whether for each decay a track of gamma, beta or alpha is produced. In the case of cesium and potassium, decay is by beta and gamma.

State again, Potassium 40 (K40) has a radioactivity of 0.0000071 curies (per gram)
Cesium 137 has a radioactivity of 88 curies per gram.

Yet nuclear industry justifies the safety of its pollution and alleges the presence of its pollution in food on the basis of the fact that naturally occurring isotope of potassium (K40) is present in bananas, when compared to Cesium 137, this K40, which makes up 0.012% of the potassium in food (and everything other source of potassium) is barely radioactive at all!!!!

100 percent of the radio cesium in food is radioactive. It is not a substitute for potassium. It is not a nutrient, and governments warn against the consumption of stable, naturally occurring cesium on the basis of its toxic effects. The radioactive fission cesiums have the same chemical toxicity as well as being many many many more time radioactive than potassium 40. The nutrient nuclear industry allege justifies the presence of its pollutant, radio cesium, in food.

On top of this, nuclear industry claims that radiation exposure from its pollution conveys a benefit. How many of the radiation tracks produced by cesium 137 in this example are beneficial? What makes the allegedly “good” radiation tracks any different from the “bad” ones? Ionisation of tissue by any given track of radiation can produce thousands of different outcomes. The case for benefit from multiple explosions and core breaches is, to say the least, unproven, and in my opinion, patently in error.

People have recently said to me that I should have discussed this matter earlier, I have.

This blog actually focussed on Radio Strontium in fair detail and over a large amount of time.

In my view, the biochemistry of strontium 89 is most interesting due to its fission creation abundance, its nature as a calsium analogue, and its very great rate of radioactivity. 1 gram of strontium has a radioactivity of 27,800 curies. That is a huge number of high energy (specific to Sr89) beta.

The rate of radioactivity of deadly radium is 1 (one) curie per gram.

The assurances of safety which rest upon the fallacy of the banana dose are like those assurances issued by Groves to the plutonium workers. It took until 1990s for the US government to admit those assurances were false.

How much radio cesium of any isotope or radio strontium of any isotope would you choose to eat?

There is no choice about potassium. It is needed for life.

How far down the road toward a command economy and a controlled market does nuclear industry want the Western nations to travel when it dictates to us that we must eat the foods it contaminates with the fission substance it claims to be “like vitamins” (Sykes)?

Taking the huge curie rate of a gram of strontium 89 as an example, what fraction of a gram is a safe amount to have in my tissue? Can anyone tell me? Give me an answer and I won’t believe you.

Ditto for the rest. So, even though radio cesium may be the main hazard, it is not the only one. For a mere slither, a fraction of gram, of it is still dangerous to my tissue.

And in terms of imposition, it is risk, not benefit, which is imparted by contaminated food. No matter how much bananas mathematics has been performed in the government regulatory offices which adjoined the corridors of TEPCO’s HQ.

“33 out of 40 rats injected with Sr89Cl developed bone cancer within a nine month window” Source: General Electric, datasheet for Metastron, Strontium 89 Chloride, the injectable form. (from:

[PDF]
Metastron Prescribing Information
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – Quick View
news.cancerconnect.com/druginserts/Strontium_89.pdf

The relevant quote is :

“Carcinogenesis, Mutagenesis, Impairment of Fertility
Data from a repetitive dose animal study suggests that
Strontium-89 Chloride is a potential carcinogen. Thirty-three of
40 rats injected with Strontium-89 Chloride in ten consecutive
monthly doses of either 250 or 350 μCi/kg developed
malignant bone tumors after a latency period of approximately
9 months. No neoplasia was observed in the control animals.
Treatment with Strontium-89 Chloride should be restricted to
patients with well documented metastatic bone disease.
Adequate studies with Strontium-89 Chloride have not been
performed to evaluate mutagenic potential or effects on fertility.
Pregnancy: Teratogenic effects.
Pregnancy Category D. See Warnings section.”) . They say “no much Sr89 has been emitted from the TEPCO reactors.” It does not take much. A slither of a speck to create a major hazard. It is chance as to who takes it in. Random chance. A hazard to an unknown individual might be a hazard to everyone. It is only significant to the individual who actually ingests it. It does not have to be a “significant amount”.)

I point out the potent carcinogenic and mutagenic nature of Sr89 was established by Pecher in the 1940s. And this knowledged was suppressed.

The curie figure is directly related to the number of radiation tracks which pass through tissue in an internalised radioactive substance. 1 curie produces 3.7 × 10^10 such radiation tracks per second.

As Linus Pauling would say, that’s some little machine gun. In my opinion only an idiot would choose to eat nuclear emissions incorporated with their food and drink. Cesium is not a banana, it is nuclear pollution.

This fact has been since 1942. Hamilton saw it as a weapon of value if the atomic bomb didn’t work. E.O. Lawrence proposed it as such to the S1 committee as a result. Nuclear industry is not in the food additive business and cannot claim any benefit at all to its effluent. The converse is true. Noone should be forced or induced to eat its tainted food and water.

LINUS PAULING ON THE CURIE

“The curie is the unit of radioactivity. It is defined as the quantity of radioactive material in which 37,000,000,000 atomic nuclei disintegrate each second. One gram of radium has the activity of one curie….in the discussion of fallout we shall make use of the “strontium unit” and the “cesium unit” The “Strontium Unit” is a measure of the amount of radioactive strontium in human bone or milk or other material containing calcium. One strontium unit is one micro-microcurie of strontium 90 per gram of calcium. One cesium unit is one micro-microcurie of cesium 137 per gram of potassium.” (Source: “No More War”, Linus Pauling, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1958, ISBN 0-396-08157-6, pp 45-46.

Clearly, nuclear authorities know and have long known that radio cesium in food does not replace the dose from K40, but adds to it. And that a small amount of radio cesium is much more radioactive than a larger amount of K40. The “Cesium Unit” and “Strontium Unit” enabled nuclear authorities to compare one piece of secretly obtained human bone tissue to another to see which was the more contaminated. The secret survey was conducted world wide. The prized bones were those of still born babies. This legacy will no doubt be repeated in years to come and fudged data will be presented to show the amounts of Fukushima core material resident in human tissue. The results will be presented with the claim that such amounts are “harmless”. Nuclear veterans and civilians have long disagreed with such past assurances and will surely disagree with future ones too. For example:

Source: AWTSC (Atomic Weapons Test Safety Committe) Report Number 5, Strontium 90 and Caesium 137
in the Australian Environment during 1969 with some results for 1970”.

The above results were obtained by the government theft of human tissue from the bodies of deceased Australians from public hospitals. No kin permission was ever sought. Pathologists around Australia received secret payments from the Federal government. The bone samples were taken firstly to Columbia University, USA for analysis, then the UK, and finally analysis was conducted in Australia. (Source: Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency Report “AUSTRALIAN STRONTIUM 90 TESTINGPROGRAM 1957-1978”, 2001.) The program was commenced at the behest of the United States and its Atomic Energy Commission. Dr Libby had pondered the legality of such tissue theft, and found willing partners in the Australian authorities. In 2001 the press again revealed the situation (it had been revealed by nuclear veterans years earlier). As a result in 2001 Minister for Health and Aged Care, Dr Michael Wooldridge, admitted that nuclear pollution from weapons testing had “harmed people”. (Source: Media Release, Dr Michael Wooldridge, Minister for Health and Aged Care, MW82/01, 5 September 2001). Today, in the wake of the Fukushima, the Japanese government has stated that the nuclear emissions from nuclear weapons testing was safe. It was not and is not. It adds to the emissions from the broken reactors.

No doubt the Japanese government will be interested in studying the human tissue methods by Columbia University, UK’s HASL and the Australian Government in the era of global human tissue radiological contamination survey known as Project Sunshine. I would hope that Japan, rather than conducting its Fukushima contamination of human tissue survey over the next 50 years in secret using slush funds for pathologists, consider earnestly doing it in the open. Not the Sr90 contamination for still born babies (age 0). How did the Sr90 get into the babies’ bones? Via the mothers’ soft tissue and across the placenta, into the fetus. Radio Strontium only goes only to bones in males. How did it get in the bones of babies who had only breast fed? Via the mothers’ milk. The mothers’ soft tissue is subject to mobilized radio isotopes during pregnancy and nursing.

This has been long known:

See also : The transfer of calcium and strontium across biological membranes. 1963 pp. xvii+443 pp.
WASHERMAN, R. H.Editor WASHERMAN, R. H. Papers given at a conference on Ca and Sr at Cornell in May 1962 are presented in sections on the fundamentals of ion transfer across membranes, physiological aspects of intestinal absorption, nutritional considerations of intestinal absorption, vitamin D and the intestinal absorption of Ca and Sr, other factors influencing the absorption of Ca and Sr, considerations of Sr metabolism, and transfer of Ca and Sr across kidney, mammary gland, nerve and muscle. The papers include “Phosphopeptldes: chemical properties and their possible role in the intestinal absorption of metals”, by O. MELLANDER (pp. 265-76); “Lactose and the absorption of Ca and Sr”, by Y. DUPUIS & P. FOURNIER (pp. 277-93); “Studies on the movement of Ca and Sr across the bovine mammary gland”, by A. R. TWARDOCK (pp. 327-39); and “Ca-vitamin Z)-parathyroid interrelationships in lactating rats”, by S. U. TOVERUD (pp. 341-58). J.M.D.

They knew and continue to know. This salient conference, held immediately prior to the cessation of atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, clearly identifies the sound reasons for the imposition of the limited test ban treaty. It also explains why any radiological release should be banned.

Let us be very clear. The reason for the presence of fission products in human tissue in the examples given above is because the fission products had contaminated the food supply. As much as Japanese authorities might seek to dilute these by burning, the facts of the biology of life are that all creatures concentrate the fission products in their tissue. Bio Accumulation will occur despite attempts at dilution. As a result of attempts of dilution, more and more people will be forced to become bio-accumulators of TEPCO’s and the Japanese Government’s emitted fission products. There is no safe disposal method for nuclear pollution.

Consequences in Japan? I have no idea of how many people will be adversely affected by their internal doses. But I sure as hell do not believe any authority of government such as the one who front in March 2011 in Japan to claim that plutonium was safe for children to eat and that only unhappy or mentally weak people get sick from radiation contamination. What an insult to every Australian nuclear veteran and every nuclear around the world and in Japan!!!

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1921007/

Can Med Assoc J. 1963 January 19; 88(3): 136–139.
PMCID: PMC1921007

Strontium-89 and Strontium-90 Levels in Breast Milk and in Mineral-Supplement Preparations

Anita A. Jarvis, John R. Brown, and Bella Tiefenbach
Copyright and License information ►
Abstract

Strontium-90, strontium-89 and S.U. values were determined in human milk before and after the resumption of atmospheric nuclear testings in 1961, and the levels were compared to cows’ milk values reported during the same time. S.U.90 levels in human milk were approximately one-fifth of those found in cows’ milk. Assuming an average dietary intake of 11-13 S.U.90 during the period tested, the mean strontium/calcium ratio of 1.78 found in human milk represents an Observed Ratio milk-diet of approximately 0.14-0.16. Although strontium-89 was present in cows’ milk already in September 1961, it did not appear in human milk until November 1961. It seems, therefore, that there was a two-month lag period between the appearance of fresh fallout in cows’ milk and human milk. Calcium-supplement mineral preparations used by pregnant and lactating women were tested to find their strontium-89, strontium-90 and S.U. levels, because strontium isotopes, if present in these products, will be transferred to the fetus and to breast-fed infants. The compounds tested had S.U.90 levels of 0.13-2.62; in none of the preparations was Sr89 present. end quote.

FDA rules state that the administration of Strontium 89 to healthy people is illegal at any dose. Full Stop. And actually, as cesium in any form is a toxin, a toxin warned of by governments prior to 3/11, one has to ask, why the change in tack since the nuclear reactors “went normal” in Japan?

A testiment to the power of the Nuclear Slum.

Source: Nukers are Bananas!!

https://nuclearhistory.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/nukers-are-bananas/

September 16, 2015 Posted by dunrenard | Nuclear | Cesium, Potassium | Leave a comment

Next Entries »