Methodology for Surveillance of the Food Chain as Conducted by the United States

Radionuclides in the Food Chain

“…We then heard about environmental pathways critical to humans: air, water, soil, the food chain itself, and the movement of both natural and artificial radionuclides through these pathways. These were embellished with some detailed reports of recent work in the Soviet Union from our Soviet colleagues (see Chapters 8,11,12,and 20). We also heard about methods of interfering with these pathways in order to reduce the final exposure.…”

“…Most of the operational controls (e.g., monitoring programs) that these limits require were in place in many countries before the accident at Chernobyl (10,11). But nothing that preceded it has focused our attention on the problems of actual and potential contamination of food as has the accident at Chernobyl.…”

Bomb Atoms in Modern Honey Reveal a Regional Soil Control on Pollutant Cycling by Plants

“…Consequently, a surveillance program sampled milk at central processing plants to monitor the radionuclide content, beginning with stations in five major cities 18 , but expanding with individual state programs to include over 100 stations in the 1960s. With the PMN and individual state programs joining the efforts using the same methodology, over 10,000 measurements of 137 Cs in milk are available, including monthly measurements from nearly every U.S. State for 1960 to 1975 19,31 . These data track the biological uptake of fission products from soil to vegetation to milk in different regions of North America and are valuable to compare with our more recent measurements of 137 Cs in honey.…”

“…Nationwide monthly average 137 Cs concentrations in milk peaked in late 1963 at 6 Bq kg -1 and fell sharply to <0.6 Bq kg -1 by 1970 in response to the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty 19 . Of the 122 honey samples we measured recently, three exceeded 6 Bq kg -1 , and 30 exceeded the 0.5 Bq kg -1 concentration that nationwide average milk remained below after 1970.…”

“…Cs from soils to plants and into the human diet was predicted decades ago, leading to a government supported radionuclide surveillance program that conducted widespread testing of milk in the late 1950s-1980s 18,19 . However, there is no published research documenting the presence or absence of 137 Cs in eastern U.S. plants or in the U.S. food supply since 1988 20 .…”