– EPA: Models show “greater potential impact” to US West Coast from rainfall containing Fukushima radioactive material — California sea water with over 10 Million pCi/m3 of iodine-131 found in sample squeezed out of seaweed (ENENews, Sep 9, 2014):
Environmental Protection Agency — Response to Fukushima Japan Nuclear Emergency: “Sea Water — Radioactive material released to ocean [by] intentional release of contaminated water used for cooling [and] leakage from damaged reactor… Modeling indicates greater potential impact to US coastal areas from precipitation than from [ocean] transport.”
- Corona Del Mar, California kelp (dried) from Apr. 15, 2011: 67,568 pCi/kg of Iodine-131 (2,500 Bq/kg)
- Santa Cruz, California kelp (dried) from May 4, 2011: 54,054 pCi/kg of Iodine-131 (2,000 Bq/kg)
- California seawater “squeezed out of the kelp” from April-May 2011: 10,811,000 pCi/m³ of Iodine-131 (400 Bq/L)
- Santa Barbara, Calilfornia seawater from March 22. 2011: 397.3 pCi/m³ of cesium-134 and -137 (14.7 Bq/m³)
- San Luis Obispo, California “Ocean Intertidal Algae” from Mar. 23, 2011: 626.90 pCi/kg of Iodine-131 (Unspecified if wet/dried; If wet, multiply by 6.67 — Over 4,000 pCi/kg)
- San Luis Obispo, California “Intertidal Mussel” from Mar. 23, 2011: 23.67 pCi/kg of Iodine-131
- Vancouver, Canada seaweed (dried) from Mar. 28, 2011: 10, 270 pCi/kg of Iiodine-131 (380 Bq/kg)
- Scientific American: “Some radioactive material [in ocean off California] probably accumulated in fish… other isotopes were in the plume from Japan that also accumulate in kelp.”
- Professor Steven L. Manley who conducted study on West Coast kelp: “If they were feeding on it, they definitely got dosed. We just don’t know if it was harmful. It’s probably not good for them… In the marine environment it was significant.”
- More from Prof. Manley: “Radioactivity is taken up by the kelp and anything that feeds on the kelp will be exposed… [it] got into the environment… we don’t know anything about the other radioisotopes like cesium 137, which stays around much longer than iodine. In fact, the values that we reported for iodine probably [is an] underestimate… It could be two to three times more because we were just sampling the surface tissue; the biomass estimates were based on canopy tissue and a lot of kelp biomass is underneath… it enters the coastal food web and gets dispersed over a variety of organisms. I would assume it’s there. It’s not a good thing, but [the] detrimental effect is beyond my expertise.”