Fukushima study tracks rise and fall of radioactivity in food
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.028674
Nature : The tsunami that struck the coast of northeastern Japan on 11 March 2011 inundated the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and led to the biggest release of radioactive material into the environment since Chernobyl. In the wake of the disaster, the Japanese government established an extensive and continuing monitoring campaign to track levels of radiation in the nation’s food supply. Stefan Merz of the Vienna University of Technology in Austria and his colleagues have analyzed the almost 900 000 food samples in the campaign database. In 2011, the year of the disaster, Merz’s team found that 3.3% of food from the region around the power plant had above-limit contamination. By 2014 the percentage had fallen to 0.6%. Food in the rest of Japan was also contaminated: 0.9% in 2011; 0.2% in 2014.
