By Jay T. Cullen

The purpose of this post is to report the results of a monitoring study looking for Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) derived contamination in freshwater fishes in Japan.  The peer reviewed study by Wada and colleagues was recently published in Journal of Environmental Radioactivity which is unfortunately behind a publisher paywall.  This post continues a series of posts aimed at communicating the results of scientific investigations of the impact of the FDNPP disaster on public and environmental health.  Wada and colleagues measured the amount of 131-Iodine (¹³¹I half life ~ 8 days), 134-Cesium (¹³⁴Cs half life ~2 years), and 137-Cesium (¹³⁷Cs half life ~30 years) in freshwater fish species collected from rivers, lakes and aquaculture ponds in Fukushima Prefecture between March 2011 and December 2014.  A total of 16 species and 2692 individual fish were examined.  Between March and June 2011 11 fish were found to have detectable but low activities of ¹³¹I (<25 Bq kg^-1 wet weight) suggesting that radioactive iodine did not accumulate significantly in fish.  Continue reading Contamination of freshwater fish by the Fukushima Nuclear Accident: Overview of monitoring results →