Monitoring inspection for radiocesium in agricultural, livestock, forestry and fishery products in Fukushima prefecture

Abstract

We selected and re-categorized the monitoring data opened by the government of Fukushima prefecture focusing on the radiocesium concentrations in four agricultural products, from the data on 90,000 samples analyzed during 3 years. Radioactivity was found to be high during 3 months after the accident because of direct fallout. The internal exposure in the area with the highest contamination area of rice during the first 3 months was calculated and estimated to be 0.75 mSv year -1 . The radioactivity in foods products rapidly decreased after 3 months later, but in the case of some forestry products and fish, there are still some products in which radioactivity was above the regulated value, 100 Bq kg -1 .

Radiocaesium contamination of wild boars in Fukushima and surrounding regions after the Fukushima nuclear accident

“…Especially, the highest 137 Cs activity concentrations were found 10 years after the accident and not earlier around Chernobyl (Gulakov, 2014). On the other hand, these temporal trends of radiocaesium levels in wild boar meat are different from those in other many food such as vegetables and beef, whose radiocaesium levels decreased quickly in Fukushima and affected prefectures in Japan, so that only a few samples exceeded the regulatory limits by summer and autumn 2011, respectively (Merz et al, 2015;Nihei et al, 2016). A similar difference in radiocaesium decrease was observed between wild foods and farmed foods after the Chernobyl accident (Beresford et al, 2016).…”

Effect of different Cs concentrations on overall plant growth and Cs distribution in soybean

“…Soybean was used as the test crop. In monitoring tests for RCs in Fukushima Prefecture, soybean plants have been shown to contain higher RCs concentrations than other crops (Nihei et al, 2016). It is thus urgent to clarify the factors responsible for this finding.…”

Agricultural aspects of radiocontamination induced by the Fukushima nuclear accident — A survey of studies by the Univ. of Tokyo Agricultural Dept. (2011–2016)

“…All agricultural products in the market are now controlled below the threshold levels for radiation exposure. 1–4) …”