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April 19, 2011 03:14 pm PDT

Is San Francisco sushi safe?

BB contributor Jess Hemerly wanted to take her fiancee for a sushi birthday dinner, but she was concerned about whether the rolls would be radioactive. When she inquired at the restaurant, they responded by asking if she was a reporter working on a story. So she said, "Sure!," made a couple more calls, and posted what she learned on the 7x7 blog: We also spoke with the Director of the Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics at Oregon State and an expert in radioecololgical benchmarks, Professor Kathryn Higley. "People need to understand the iodine releases have basically stopped from the plant," she says. "There might be some runoff, but the hefty discharges stopped over a month ago. Dilution is a pretty phenomenal thing." While she cannot 100-percent guarantee that it's impossible for Cesium-137 to show up in area wildlife, she does say that it's unlikely anyone would get a "whopping high dose." She also emphasizes that toxic organisms and mercury, which are regular risks associated with sushi, are far more of a concern than radiation. As for the cooling water dumped into the ocean, Higley assures us it's not a concern either. And while to some it may seem like an irresponsible decision, Higley says, "The doses generated are very low, so while it's not the most desirable solution to dump that water into the ocean, considering the situation they were dealing with, it was the best choice." She also notes that problems would occur only if people in the area ate and continued to eat contaminated fish, but that is unlikely to be a problem. While she hasn't seen good data, she assumes that due to the tsunami, "the fisheries in that area are trashed." "Is It Safe to Eat Sushi?"...


Original Link: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/SR819QaX36A/is-san-francisco-sus.html

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