New Independent Fukushima Food Contamination Results

People in Japan early on realized they needed to take things into their own hands if they wanted to know the conditions around them and what their risk factors were. Citizen labs have been set up in Japan to allow people to test their own food. These labs were modeled after the labs set up in Europe after Chernobyl. This has provided an independent confirmation against government testing and a more diverse set of readings. These local labs focus on the food available within a region, even allowing people to test foods from their own gardens to determine if they are safe to eat.

While the government in Japan (and elsewhere) have insisted anything below legal intervention levels of food contamination are “safe”, the public and many NGOs have disputed this. Ongoing problems with cesium in children’s urine belies the govt claim that all is ok. Two sets of standards have evolved. The one the government uses and the one the public uses to scrutinize their food supply.

In recent months the government food testing program has turned their focus towards food items that are known to have little or no contamination along with some periodic widespread screening of things like beef. This leaves considerable holes in the understanding of contamination levels in food. We gathered readings from a variety of citizen run labs across Japan. These also include a few readings for non-domestic sources including soil from Vancouver. Out of the readings that were frequently positive are citrus fruits, that were found to be contaminated along with persimmons and kiwi fruit. There were also many negative, no contamination findings for foods including those in Fukushima. We did not include those for brevity but can be found in the reports linked to in the positive findings. Soil and moss from the Setagaya area of Tokyo were found to be contaminated. Wood stove pellet ash from Gifu was found to be contaminated. Gifu was assumed to not have been significantly contaminated from the disaster. Miyagi sourced wood pellets gave a considerably higher reading. Both wood pellet samples were burned at homes near Tokyo, showing how our widely distributed consumer system for products can bring contaminated products to other areas.

Recent Food Testing Results from most recent 2013-2014 tests:

Chiba Prefecture:
Shiitake mushrooms: 5.7 bq/kg combined cesium
Wild boar meat: 9.51 – 242 bq/kg combined cesium
Pomelo (citrus): 16 bq/kg cesium 137
Amanatsu (citrus) 10.1 bq/kg cesium 137
Hassaku orange: 11.9 bq/kg cesium 137 (others tested below detection)
Chestnut: 7.2 to 26 bq/kg combined cesium

CRMS Testing Network:
Vancouver Canada soil: 16.93 bq/kg cesium 137
Ibaraki marine soil: 3.16 bq/kg cesium 137
Fukushima (Nihonmatsu) dried persimmon: 19.05 bq/kg combined cesium
Fukushima (Date) dried persimmon: 21.44 to 373.02 bq/kg combined cesium 
Fukushima (Nihonmatsu) soybean: 5.45 bq/kg cesium 137
Fukushima (Date) yuzu citrus: 149.41 to 285.76 bq/kg combined cesium
Fukushima (Nihonmatsu) stain radish: 56.1 bq/kg combined cesium
Fukushima (Date) anpokaki (dried persimmon): 73.74 bq/kg combined cesium
Fukushima (Date) 2011 rice: 14.67 to 33.74 bq/kg combined cesium
Fukushima (Date) plum: 11.29 bq/kg combined cesium 
Fukushima (Shirakawa-cho Aizu) dried jujube: 39.71 bq/kg combined cesium
Fukushima (Nihonmatsu) dried white red bean: 23.01 bq/kg combined cesium
Fukushima (Minamisoma) artichoke: 40.27 bq/kg combined cesium
Fukushima (Nihonmatsu) red pepper: 10.30 bq/kg cesium 137
Chiba field soil: 33.11 bq/kg cesium 137
Miyagi origin wood pellet stove ash: 1952.20 bq/kg combined cesium
Gifu origin wood pellet stove ash: 215.20 bq/kg combined cesium
Tokyo (Setagaya) soil:  81.52 to 156.51 bq/kg combined cesium
Tokyo (Setagaya) yuzu citrus:  3.19 bq/kg combined cesium
Fukushima (Date) kiwi:  28.87 to 43.94 bq/kg combined cesium
Fukushima (Nihonmatsu) kiwi: 16.54 to 19.96 bq/kg combined cesium
Tokyo (Setagaya) moss: 2564 bq/kg combined cesium
Tokyo (Suginami) soil and moss: 599 bq/kg combined cesium
Fukushima (Nihonmatsu) blueberry: 5.27 bq/kg cesium 137 (did not note if wild or cultivated)
Fukushima (Tamura) blueberry jam: 5.16 bq/kg combined cesium
Saitama tea leaves: 102.5 bq/kg combined cesium
Fukushima tofu: 5.4 bq/kg

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