Radioactive Water Poses No Seafood Risk to People

Workers in Japan have started dumping more than three million gallons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. Tokyo Electric officials spent about two days dumping out all that water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in northeastern Japan, following the devastating March 11 earthquake. That water contains unsafe levels of radioactive iodine and cesium but it is a necessary move to make room to store more radioactive water used to cool superheated fuel rods after the quake.

The water will disperse in the ocean and become less radioactive as it decays. Since the most common form of radioactive iodine loses half of its potency in just eight days radioactive water heading toward Hawaii and the U.S. mainland will be so diluted by the time it reaches the shores it likely won’t pose any risk.

Some concerned residents in Hawaii have stopped eating seafood and stopped drinking bottled water. Scientists say that is unnecessary at this point because it will take weeks or months — depending on ocean currents — for any radioactive water to reach detectable levels near the islands.

A physicist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa has already begun monitoring water off Waikiki Beach for any signs of radioactivity. So far, nothing has been observed. Henrieta Dulaiova expects some radioactive material to be detectable in Hawaiian waters in the coming weeks but she is not concerned about seafood or water contamination.

The three million gallons of water dumped from the Fukushima Daichi power plant is about enough to fill five Olympic-sized swimming pools. The Pacific Ocean holds enough water to fill about three trillion of those same pools. In other words, the size of the ocean will make radioactive water less of a threat to fish and people.

The Food and Drug Administration is carefully watching all fish and food imported to the U.S. from Japan, looking for any signs of radioactivity.

In Japan, radioactive food is unfortunately inevitable, but very manageable.

James Acton says the first radioactive fish has been found with unsafe levels of radioactive iodine and cesium. But he says radioactive contamination is a manageable problem because strict monitoring will keep dangerous food off of people’s tables.

The Carnegie Endowment nuclear physicist says that radioactive material released into the water and atmosphere is becoming so diluted already that even twenty miles away from the nuclear power plant, radiation levels are undetectable.

For those of us part way around the world, the risk of radioactive contamination is very low. On the west coast of the U.S. iodine-131 has been detected in milk but experts and public health officials haven’t raised any warnings that those amounts present any risk whatsoever. Several experts have been equating the amount of radiation in the air and in food to being about the same dose any airline passenger receives when going on a trip.