New tuna flavour widely available in Pacific: Day Glow

You know all those new varieties of Dolly tuna found on our shelves in PNG today? You know---rather than the light meat or albacore you find on Australia's supermarket shelves, we now have tuna loaf, and tuna with tinned peas and curry tuna, and all manner of 'luncheon' treats (including, some would say, both Male and Female Condom falvours).

Well, thanks to Fukishima in Japan, our choices now just got wider.

This one is radiated!

Apparently all aross the Pacific our tuna has been fed a daily diet of Fukishima radiation for the past two years, and we can now enjoy, with absolute confidence, the flavour benefits of this innovation.

Everyone gets the new taste sensation. But perhaps none as directly or in such concentrated form as Papua Nnew Guinea!

Highly radioactive water seeping into the ocean from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is creating an “emergency” that the operator is struggling to contain, an official from the country’s nuclear watchdog said on Monday.

This contaminated groundwater has breached an underground barrier, is rising toward the surface and is exceeding legal limits of radioactive discharge, Shinji Kinjo, head of a Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) task force, told Reuters.

The utility pumps out some 400 metric tons a day of groundwater flowing from the hills above the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the basements of the destroyed buildings, which mixes with highly irradiated water that is used to cool the reactors in a stable state below 100 degrees Celsius.

Tepco is trying to prevent groundwater from reaching the plant by building a “bypass” but recent spikes of radioactive elements in sea water has prompted the utility to reverse months of denials and finally admit that tainted water is reaching the sea.

Tepco said on Friday that a cumulative 20 trillion to 40 trillion becquerels of radioactive tritium had probably leaked into the sea since the disaster. The company said this was within legal limits.

Tritium is far less harmful than cesium and strontium, which have also been released from the plant. Tepco is scheduled to test strontium levels next.

Tepco said in late June that it had detected the highly toxic strontium-90, a by-product of nuclear fission that can cause bone cancer if ingested, at levels 30 times the permitted rate.

The substances, which were released by the meltdowns of reactors at the plant in the aftermath of the huge tsunami of March 2011, were not absorbed by soil and have made their way into underground water.

Subsoil water usually flows out to sea, meaning these two substances could normally make their way into the ocean, possibly affecting marine life and ultimately impacting humans who eat sea creatures.

Samples taken on Monday showed levels of possibly cancer-causing caesium-134 were more than 90 times higher than they were on Friday, at 9000 becquerels per litre, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) revealed.

Levels of caesium-137 stood at 18 000 becquerels per litre, 86 times higher than at the end of last week, the utility said.

“We still don’t know why the level of radiation surged, but we are continuing efforts to avert further expansion of contamination,” a Tepco spokesperson stated.

Moreover the human body absorbs iodine and caesium readily. “Essentially all the iodine or caesium inhaled or swallowed crosses into the blood,” says Keith Baverstock, former head of radiation protection for the World Health Organization’s European office, who has studied Chernobyl’s health effects.

Iodine is rapidly absorbed by the thyroid, and leaves only as it decays radioactively, with a half-life of eight days. Caesium is absorbed by muscles, where its half-life of 30 years means that it remains until it is excreted by the body. It takes between 10 and 100 days to excrete half of what has been consumed.

Now we don't want to pull say told ya so, but it was only weeks ago when media reported no real taste of this new flavour sensation:

Radioactive Water From Fukushima Is Systematically Poisoning The Entire Pacific Ocean

By Michael Snyder, on August 5th, 2013

Published on Saturday, June 15, 2013 by Common Dreams

Fishy Accounts of Health Risks from Poison Fukushima Tuna

by John LaForge

On June 4th, 2013, London-based news source the Guardian reported, “Fukushima tuna safe to eat – study.” The day before, the Los Angeles Times reported, “Scientists to eaters: Don’t freak out over Fukushima fish.” The San Diego Union-Tribune was emphatic: “Tuna Pose No Risk after Nuke Disaster,” and online, “Fukushima seafood radiation risk nil, study says.” The BBC ran with, “Fukushima tuna pose little health risk.” And CNN declared, “Fukushima tuna study finds minuscule health risks.”

So which is it? Does that sushi or canned tuna pose a minuscule risk, just a little one, or is it safe? The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a report online May 30, 2013 that garnered these vastly disparate headlines. The NAS team studied measurements of cesium-137 and cesium-134 in Bluefin tuna caught off the California coast. The cesium was dumped or leaked as liquids into and deposited as gaseous fallout on the Pacific Ocean from Fukushima’s three catastrophic reactor meltdowns. The poisoned tuna swam 5,000 miles to our West Coast.

It is clear from the report that the Union-Tribune and the Guardian grossly “mis-headlined” the NAS’s findings. The tuna had an estimated 7.7 nano-sieverts [the sievert is a standard measure of the biological impacts of radiation] per 7-ounce serving. Since no radiation exposure of any kind is “safe,” headlines writers declaring the risk is “nil” and the tuna “safe” had not done the slightest bit of digging.

A simple internet search of agency web sites illustrates the fact that every US government agency that regulates radiation exposures, including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Energy, Transportation and Health and Human Services Departments and the National Academy of Sciences itself, agrees that there is “no safe dose.” The National Council on Radiation Protection says, “[E]very increment of radiation exposure produces an incremental increase in the risk of cancer.” In addition to noting that “radiation is a carcinogen,” the American Nuclear Society warns, “It may also cause other adverse health effects, including genetic defects in the children of exposed parents or mental retardation in the children of mothers exposed during pregnancy.”

There is an effect scale. If a nuclear blast occurs in front of your face it wipes the body off the map in milliseconds. If it occurs a suburb or two away the body takes a few days to die. Further away and the body suffers for a longer period of time before it packs it in. Often due to cancer. Further away again and fatigue, digestive upsets and disorders, lethargy, depression and so on are less severe but just as debilitating on a body. The principle is, the more radiation the body receives in a shorter period of time, the less it survives.

Fortunately for us, the opposite also holds true. The less radiation the body receives OR THE MORE THE BODY IS ABLE TO GET RID OF RADIOACTIVE PARTICLES, the less damaging effect the radiation has on the survival of the body.

Please consult a medical practitioner to determine the best course of action for you to take with regards to your body. Of course most of them don’t have a clue of how to handle radiation exposure, but if enough people ask, it will be profitable for them to spend the time to learn about it and advise you correctly.

Here is a list of points to take up with your primary health care practitioner or a specialist.

1. Filter fluoride out of your drinking water. Fluoride prevents the body from taking in iodine. Adequate Iodine intake is essential for a healthy thyroid gland. The thyroid is a key player in the immune system of the body.

2. Get your iodine level checked. If deficient, take some iodine in your water. Most people are deficient in it. Per this article (and many others) “In Germany on Wednesday, the Federal Office for Radiation Protection held a news conference that described the threat from the Japanese plume as trifling and said there was no need for people to take iodine tablets. The pills can prevent poisoning from the atmospheric release of iodine-131, a radioactive byproduct of nuclear plants.”

But on the plus side: Think Day Glow!