Thursday, December 15, 2011

France's ACRO Finds Radioactive Cesium in Vacuum Cleaner Filters in Fukushima, Iwate

The highest is Watari District in Fukushima City, close to 20,000 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium. Kashiwa City in Chiba and Ichinoseki City in Iwate, about 200 kilometers south and north of Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant respectively, also tested rather high, with close to 6,000 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium.

ACRO used Osaka as control.

No mention of whether other nuclides were tested or found.

From ACRO press release on December 15, 2011:

House dust

ACRO has analysed dust of vacuum cleaners from 13 dwellings. Excepted Osaka, chosen as a reference because it is located 600 km from the plant, all dust samples are contaminated with cesium 137 and 134 following the catastrophe of Fukushima.

It is in the district of Watari of Fukushima-city that the contamination is highest with almost 20,000 becquerels per kilogram for both cesium. This district, located about fifty kilometres from the plant, is known to be particularly contaminated and the sale of rice is prohibited.

Homes are also significantly contaminated in Ichinoseki in Iwate province to the north and in Kashiwa in Chiba to the south, situated in the northern suburbs of Tokyo. In both cities, located about 200 km of the plant, contaminated dust is nearly 6,000 becquerels per kilogram.

We don’t know from when the dust was collected by the vacuum cleaners. In Japan, one removes shoes before entering home.

(H/T anon reader)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I did a test on my own house dust. I live in Tokyo, near the site where they are burying ash from the governments incineration of radioactive waste.

I gathered dust from a floor mop from an area which had not been dusted in a year.

My over-priced, cheaply made geiger counter could not detect anything. I did test on a known source and the thing does at least work, albeit slowly.

Anonymous said...

All this testing and arguing over numbers is irrelevant. Each side is missing the point.

FACT 1: Radiation Kills.
FACT 2: Anything measured above background will kill, eventually.
FACT 3: Only brilliant science will stop this from killing everything.

How much in a sample, is taken as a "one time" exposure. Now do that cumulative exposure everyday = 20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000+20,000, on and on for years....nothing will survive.

Common sense beats politics & profit every time!

Anonymous said...

Anon at 3:02

Even according to official stats the background air level (never mind concentrated dust) in Tokyo is still almost double what it was pre disaster and will be for the foreseeable future. So when you say your geiger counter did not detect anything what was the actual reading?

Link to Tokyo air monitoring. Readings on the ground will often me MUCH higher. http://monitoring.tokyo-eiken.go.jp/monitoring/graph.html

Anonymous said...

There is a link to readings taken one meter from the ground http://monitoring.tokyo-eiken.go.jp/mp_shinjuku_air.html

I wouldn't call them MUCH higher. But then again, I'm not one of these guys that goes around thinking anything above background is going to kill me. Call me an optimist.

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