More Radiation Testing for Food in Japan
Last month, the anti-nuclear activists at Greenpeace announced the results of independent radiation testing of Japanese seafood. Tests on 60 different fish products from four major supermarket chains found that nothing exceeded safety standards. Many products contained no detectable radiation, and the highest recorded amount was 88 becquerels per kilogram (in “wakasagi” lake smelt from Ibaraki Prefecture). The test results should be reassuring, since the highest amount was much lower than the 500 bequerels per kilogram safety limit set by the government. It was even less than the amount of natural radioactivity found in bananas(130 Bq/kg) or brazil nuts (444 Bq/kg).
Nevertheless, consumer fear about radiation remains, and some organizations are conducting their own radiation tests. Here are a few recent examples:
Authorities in Tokyo began their own program aimed at testing the safety of food being sold in the city:
The 500 items will include processed foods that regular households consume almost daily, such as tofu, boiled beans, juice and jam. Fresh food subject to inspection will include meat–except beef, because the metropolitan government is already conducting blanket testing on cows–milk, eggs, vegetables and fish.
Among other food items, the inspections will focus on items regularly consumed by children, according to the officials.Metropolitan government officials will visit supermarkets and other retailers to seek their cooperation, buying 20 to 30 items per week from stores that will then be checked with handheld geiger counters.
If any of the foodstuffs are found to contain 50 becquerels per kilogram or more of radioactive substances, they will go through additional tests using germanium detectors.
The test results will be displayed on the Web site of the Tokyo metropolitan government, which also will release the names of products found to contain radioactive substances above provisional standards set by the central government.
Rice farmers in Fukushima are banding together to enforce a “near-zero limit” on cesium in rice (as opposed to the 500 becquerels/kg safety limit set by the national government):
A self-imposed, near-zero limit on radiation in rice may help spur sales from Fukushima, which was the fourth-largest producer in Japan last year, representing about 5 percent of the total harvest. The prefectural office of Zen-Noh, Japan’s biggest farmers group, plans to only ship cesium-free rice to address safety concerns, as does the National Confederation of Farmers Movements, which includes about 30,000 producers nationwide.
“We advise our members to test their rice for radiation and sell only if results show no cesium is detected,” said Yoshitaka Mashima, vice chairman of the confederation. The government has tried to “hide inconvenient information, which is deepening consumer distrust.”
The near-zero limit was set as very low levels of cesium are hard to detect. Testing equipment in Japan is unable to verify levels of cesium in food below 5 becquerels a kilogram, according to Mashima.
AEON, Japan’s largest retail chain, is enacting its own “near-zero” radiation policy for food sold in its supermarkets:
…it is moving to zero radiation contamination of its food products. This includes all seafood – which is a central part of the Japanese diet – sold by AEON.
To achieve this, AEON is strengthening its radiation screening, releasing the results to the public, and stopping sales of products they find to contain any amount of radioactive contamination, not just those that are below official government safety levels.
It doesn’t look like they will be applying the “zero radiation” rule to foods that contain radioactive potassium (bananas, nuts, potatoes, beer, etc.). It’s a good thing that there will be more tests for radiation, but it is very misleading for stores to market themselves as radiation-free when selling foods that contain natural radiation.
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