Nuclear fallout is showing up in U.S. honey, decades after bomb tests

https://www.science.org/content/article/nuclear-fallout-showing-us-honey-decades-after-bomb-tests

by ColinWright • 5 years ago

314 213 5 years ago

Victerius• 5 years ago

I like honey and nuclear weapons. I consume honey on a daily basis. Can this affect my health? Am I eating radioactive fallout?

vmchale• 5 years ago

Levels of radioactive cesium aren’t concerning, but

See the subtitle.

tenpies• 5 years ago

If anything, in tens of thousands of years, when anthropologists dig up the remains of the 2000s civilizations, you will make it that much easier for them to date us.

GordonS• 5 years ago

I can understand liking nuclear power, but you like... nuclear weapons?! Or has my sarcasm meter failed miserably?!

hetspookjee• 5 years ago

Well minus the fallout and mortalities quite some people, included, find big explosions quite awesome. I wouldn’t say I like nuclear weapons specifically though

missedthecue• 5 years ago

There is a theory that the so called 'Long Peace' of 1945-present is a direct consequence of nuclear proliferation. This could be one possible reason to like nuclear weapons.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Peace

dtech2• 5 years ago

It's in the article

The radiocesium levels reported in the new study fall "well below" 1200 becquerels per kilogram—the cutoff for any food safety concerns, the agency (red: FDA) says.

devmunchies• 5 years ago

I like honey and nuclear weapons

I eat enough honey that I AM a nuclear weapon.

selimthegrim• 5 years ago

Out of the mouths of (ideally older than one year old) babes...

omgJustTest2• 5 years ago

radwatch.berkeley.edu

(This is an educational site that does food monitoring as public outreach. It is underfunded, and full disclosure, I am a former leader of the project).

omgJustTest2• 5 years ago

https://radwatch.berkeley.edu/current-air-activity/ https://radwatch.berkeley.edu/current-sampling/ Are the two links of particular interest / relevance to naturally occurring radioactive materials, distinctions between fallout and reactor isotopic compositions and etc.

(Broken links are all over the page because as I said, underfunded and mostly run by students these days)

grapescheesee• 5 years ago

Sweet, thanks for the links and efforts. Do they have much for historical data available?

mwattsun6• 5 years ago

I wore a dosimeter in my 20's on a nuclear submarine and received some radiation exposure working on the reactor, but the Navy explained to me that it was balanced out because I was underwater and not receiving radiation exposure from the sun. 40 years later, and still cancer free, knock on wood.

In a related note, I know someone who keeps bees and harvests honey. I recently visited the spot way out in the mountains where he does this and I asked why he chose a spot so far out. He explained that to get the organic label, the honey must contain no pesticides and if you keep bees around the property of other people they will ingest pesticides from flowers on those property, since pesticides are so commonly used.

tata71• 5 years ago

How can we collate a list of all these committed people, and verifiably share their commitment to excellence?

mixedCase• 5 years ago

The GP mentioned this is what the organic label requires, so you could use that as an indicator.

tyingq• 5 years ago

At least save whatever documentation you have. I have some letter from the military about various nasty organic solvents they had us use squirreled away somewhere.

mwattsun6• 5 years ago

They sent me something out of the blue a couple of years ago documenting my total radiation exposure. There must have been a law passed sometime.

ampdepolymerase• 5 years ago

The math sounds nonsensical. The risk adjusted exposure from a reactor should definitely be higher as you would be closer to the threshold of DNA bond breaking. Being stabbed once a year isn't necessary better than getting hundred paper cuts. Any actuaries here care to comment?

giantg2• 5 years ago

Depends on what the actual numbers are. Can't really do the math without them.

ErikVandeWater• 5 years ago

The risk adjusted exposure from a reactor should definitely be higher as you would be closer to the threshold of DNA bond breaking.

How are you so certain? You don't know the specifics of the situation. If he worked underwater for a year and spent half a day working on a reactor in protective gear it could easily even out.

jcims• 5 years ago

There are mountains of literature and regulations on this and the math just kind of works that way (up to some limit, beyond which acute radiation effects will begin to dominate)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model

There is now some thought that very low doses of ionizing radiation are better than no radiation at all (so called 'radiation hormesis'), but I don't believe that has been adopted as part of any specific standard.

FWIW an individual person may be experiencing up to a trillion DNA mutations per day from both external and internal mechanisms of action. We just have a bunch of systems built in to prevent them from getting out of control (most of the time).

Luc• 5 years ago

the honey must contain no pesticides and if you keep bees around the property of other people they will ingest pesticides from flowers on those property, since pesticides are so commonly used.

I think this is a very common misunderstanding. The bees are allowed to forage on organically-cultivated crops, and farmers can use a whole range of 'natural' but also 'certified' synthetic pesticides on them.

Producers of organic food don't seem to mind too much that people assume organic food growing doesn't involve the use of pesticides.

hammock• 5 years ago

The synthetics that are allowed in certified organic farming are pretty limited (when it comes to pesticide use) and pretty innocuous. Anyone can read about them specifically here: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-7/part-205/subpart-g

mwattsun6• 5 years ago

Is there a word for "strictly" organic, because that's what my friend is by choice

traceroute663• 5 years ago

the Navy explained to me that it was balanced out because I was underwater and not receiving radiation exposure from the sun

With the greatest respect to the Navy, I smell more fish than in the seas that submarine travelled through.

My non-scientific understanding is that sun exposure is UV radiation exposure which causes skin melanoma. Meanwhile with nuclear reactors, UV is not the problem and the problem with exposure goes deeper than skin melanoma.

My feeling is you received a standardised "policy explanation" rather than an entirely scientific one. Happy to be proven wrong with links to scientific fact though !

lorenzhs• 5 years ago

Cosmic background radiation is a thing and water is really good at blocking it, so it's not complete bullshit. Of course, without knowing what dose the GP received, it's impossible to say whether it's a comparable dose to what they would have received on the surface - but it's plausible.

tapland• 5 years ago

It's true for nuclear reactor buildings where the walls block more background radiation as well.

I'd you are worried, avoid plane flights.

Handy simplified chart: https://xkcd.com/radiation/

mlyle7• 5 years ago

XKCD has a really good chart:

https://xkcd.com/radiation/

Humans receive about 3-4 mSv per year of background radiation on average. Some of this is from radioactive decay, and some from cosmic radiation. Being underwater much of the year might shave 1-2 mSv off this.

Civilian radiation workers can receive, by regulation, doses up to 50 mSv per year. Typical reactor workers in the civilian energy sector get a couple mSv per year of dose. It is plausible that he was close to breakeven.

100mSv/year is the lowest dose that has shown a clear link to increased cancer risk.

mwattsun6• 5 years ago

You're probably right. I thought the same thing, but since I didn't care I didn't pursue it. I would have cared if the scuttlebutt was that people were getting sick and dying, but that was not the case. Sub sailors were not dying in an detectable numbers.

elevenoh• 5 years ago

Well put.

I'm amazed at some of the idioms I hear about comparable radiation doses.

These idioms often completely overlook things like dose duration.

hasmanean• 5 years ago

You’re breathing the same recycled air for weeks at a time. The radiation is continuously creating isotopes in the gases in that air. That means a continuously increasing radiation exposure the longer you stay underwater.

On the surface any radioactive gases get dispersed in the atmosphere.

trenchgun5• 5 years ago

Surely that would show up on the dosimeter?

pdonis4• 5 years ago

The radiation is continuously creating isotopes in the gases in that air.

What radiation? Note that he didn't say he received radiation exposure throughout the submarine, only "working on the reactor". That's an isolated space that doesn't continuously exchange air with the rest of the submarine and has an extra layer of shielding between it and the rest of the submarine (in addition to the shielding around the reactor itself that separates that from the space where people working on the reactor go--nobody ever goes inside the reactor itself).

pdonis4• 5 years ago

On the surface any radioactive gases get dispersed in the atmosphere.

The relevant radiation exposure when you're outdoors is not from radioactive gases in the air, it's from radiation hitting atoms in your body. (The relevant radiation to compare with what a nuclear reactor produces is actually not from the Sun, it's from cosmic rays.)

mwattsun6• 5 years ago

No, this is not the case. We often surfaced at night to recirculate with fresh air. In fact, this is done so often that the first thing we do is turn the clocks 12 hour forward so our day shift when everyone was working occurred at night. We need to surface to recharge the lead acid battery off the diesel engine as well, which was done to make sure that kept working well. I did this when newly qualified as an electric plant operator and it was difficult for me to do correctly.

Mary-Jane• 5 years ago

Reactors on Navy vessels, since at least the 70s, are very safe. They are closed systems and are completely sealed in compartments surrounded by feet of shielding. While some negligible amount of radiation does get through, it's half life is very short. Radioactive isotopes don't escape, nor do they get created by proximity to a radiation source and start floating around the crew compartment. In addition, each crew member carries a dosimeter which tracks their exposure. As others pointed out, walking around outside exposes us to more radiation (from the sun, earth, ceramic tiles...) than spending months next to to one of these reactors.

Tade0• 5 years ago

It might have been because of the insecticides really. I have a donation subscription to an organisation which keeps bees in the dead center of a 1.7mln city.

Turns out the bees thrive in this environment, because they're still better off there than in the countryside.

errcorrectcode4• 5 years ago

I would take anything the US mil claimed with a large grain of sodium chloride. There has been an extensive history of them and their affiliated contractors lying to personnel and civilians: agent orange, ddt, pcbs, gulf war syndrome/pesticides/sarin/mustard gas, radium, and so on.

You have to know your actual average, peak, and total dosages to be able to compare it with everyday civie life.

Regarding pesticides: the US has a major problem with gross under-regulation of chemicals in nearly every context. This stems from TSCA 1964 grandfathering-in 10k's of chemicals without evidence of safety, a guiding principle of "assume safe until proven otherwise because profits", and ignoring safety data and conservative exposure standards set in the rest of the industrialized world.

Edit: My father worked on the flight line of a US military base in Vietnam. He was exposed to agent orange, unburnt napalm, and jet fuel many times. He suffered from the rare adult-onset type I diabetes for most of his life and experienced several kinds of cancers.

Spooky232• 5 years ago

Regarding pesticides: the US has a major problem with gross under-regulation of chemicals in nearly every context.

There’s other weird corners to pesticides. I found myself helping somebody with a .gov contract that required computing equipment to be sanitized and cleaned with a manufacturer recommended method that is a listed pesticide.

Problem: most manufacturers recommend isopropyl alcohol for this purpose, and it’s one of those grandfathered in chemicals, and isn’t “listed” as a pesticide.

Solution: We found a company that made cleaning supplies for industrial processes, and they had a specific formulation of isopropyl alcohol wipes listed as a pesticide. (For a price nearly 20x more than normal products)

It’s a silly story but illustrates how nuts this stuff is. Just with something silly like sanitizing wipes, people are using proprietary “quats” with serious potential health impacts where something as simple as alcohol could easily do the job.

xyst• 5 years ago

While the levels of radiocesium found in honey are not harmful to humans, I wonder if it has any deleterious effects on the bees themselves? Could this be a contribution to the "colony collapse disorder" we are seeing worldwide?

dtech2• 5 years ago

No, if that were the case it would have started in the 60's and gradually gotten better (bees have short lifespans). Instead, it's gotten worse and started much later. Pesticides are a much more likely explanation.

freeflight5• 5 years ago

Nothing stops these effects, even when they are minor, from ultimately compounding to such a degree that they have a major impact.

In that context it's imho a bit weird how we humans always gotta have that one causation, when reality is usually extremely multi-causal and complex.

themaninthedark2• 5 years ago

They mention it might be having an effect but also stat the the level is about 10 times lower than in the 70's. So my guess is that unless a high level of radioactivity is good but low level is bad then it is not a major contributing factor.

laserbeam• 5 years ago

Unlikely. The article talks about a localized phenomenon, not something that could effect worldwide bee population issues. It explicitly talks about comparing honey from that region to other honey in the US.

Pesticides, possibly pollution, and disease in general are much more likely candidates. Last I heard there was an issue with some bee parasites, however you'd need to verify that.

EarlKing• 5 years ago

ahem https://archive.fo/8SZos

Krasnol7• 5 years ago

Germany still has significant radiation in wild boars (and mushrooms) from the Chernobyl fallout:

https://www.umweltanalysen.com/en/wild-boar/cesium-137-conta...

From September 1st, 2017 to December 31st, 2019, muscle meat samples from 376 wild boars were delivered by the forest services (Bodenmais 129, Dahn 123 and Zusmarshausen 124). So far, 355 samples have been measured for Cs-137 activity. The Cs-137 contamination of wild boars fluctuated seasonally depending on the availability of individual food components within a study area, with the variability of the measured values being up to three orders of magnitude. The values ranged from 0.6 Bq/kg fresh mass (FM) (Dahn) to 16,704 Bq/kg (Bodenmais).

godelski19• 5 years ago

This constantly gets brought up but few people run the numbers because you can safely eat kilograms of each a day. You can see the full calculations if you search my comments. The truth is just that we're really good at detecting radiation because doing so allows us to better detect weapons.

deeg2• 5 years ago

How does the radiation from boar meat compare to sunlight? E.g. eating 500 grams is similar to sitting in the sun for 5 minutes, in very rough comparison.

Krasnol7• 5 years ago

The thing is: it doesn't matter what me or you think about it.

There are food regulations in Germany and they need to be obeyed.

trenchgun5• 5 years ago

What do you mean my significant?

Krasnol7• 5 years ago

Significant means that hunters need to hand in their boar, it will be checked and if it surpasses the health levels defined, they're reimbursed with 250€ for every boar. This is taxpayer money. And just the state of Bavaria pays millions every year.

newsclues• 5 years ago

I often wonder if nuclear testing or fossil fuels is having a worse impact on humans and society. Maybe both are partly to blame for the madness

palijer• 5 years ago

What do you mean by "the madness"?

godelski19• 5 years ago

Fossil fuels. No question. We know the dangers of both very well. Only a handful of people have died from nuclear. More people die each day from climate.

kube-system• 5 years ago

Not to mention that the use of fossil fuels also releases small amounts of radioactive contamination directly into the atmosphere as a matter of normal use.

ThinkBeat2• 5 years ago

Um he said "nuclear testing", not "nuclear power".

laurent92• 5 years ago

More people die each day from climate.

And from solar panels! There are a dozen deaths a year, worldwide, from installing them on roofs, which mean solar is more deadly than nuclear ;)

8bitsrule• 5 years ago

Only a handful of people have died from nuclear.

I accept that statement only when it's followed by ' so far as you know.'

[https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/atomic-veterans-1946-...]

[https://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/25/us/us-nuclear-accident-in...]

drran7• 5 years ago

How much we can «safely» kill by nuclear power? Can you give us a number?

freeflight5• 5 years ago

Only a handful of people have died from nuclear.

At least if one ignores the hundreds of thousands of people who were directly killed by nuclear weapons.

acidburnNSA6• 5 years ago

Fossil and biofuel combustion kills 8 million people per year and has for decades [1]. Nuclear testing exposed some hundreds of people to high levels of radiation, some of which died or had shortened lives. Wide populations that got fallout doses many times less than natural background were very likely not affected by testing fallout.

Thus, fossil and biofuel combustion have been many orders of magnitude worse than nuclear weapons testing for overall human health.

[1] https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1

lmilcin2• 5 years ago

Actually, nuclear fallout is present in everything.

Following Trinity test and the rest of nuclear testing campaign, every single living thing or any matter that has been processed in any way has been contaminated and shows high background radiation (compared to pre-Trinity test).

That's why some materials like steel from ships comissioned before Trinity test or lead ballast from sunken Roman ships is highly sought after where low background radiation material is required.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/10/search-d...

goatsi• 5 years ago

For lead the radioactivity comes from uranium mixed with the original ore, not from outside sources. That's why it needs to be hundreds or thousands of years old rather than just pre 1945.

All lead mined on Earth naturally contains some amount of the radioactive element uranium 235, which decays, over time, into another radioactive element, a version of lead called lead 210. When lead ore is first processed, it is purified and most of the uranium is removed. Whatever lead 210 is already present begins to break down, with half of it decaying on average every 22 years. In Roman lead almost all of the lead 210 has already decayed, whereas in lead mined today, it is just beginning to decay.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-roman-lea...

secondcoming• 5 years ago

Probably a stupid question, but wouldn’t all lead have started decaying at the same time? Why would lead only start to decay once it has been mined?

jabl3• 5 years ago

Following Trinity test and the rest of nuclear testing campaign, every single living thing or any matter that has been processed in any way has been contaminated and shows high background radiation (compared to pre-Trinity test).

Well, high and high. On average, humans worldwide receive a dose of about 4 mSv/year. Nuclear weapons testing and nuclear accidents contribute about 0.01 mSv/year to that.

lmilcin2• 5 years ago

Well, "high" was meant in context of the title of the article as in "detectably higher".

downrightmike• 5 years ago

Yup, illegal grave robbing in the south pacific is destroying many ships that were lost with hands onboard. https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2017/nov/03...

dtgriscom2• 5 years ago

Obligatory XKCD reference on radiation levels: https://xkcd.com/radiation/

xd• 5 years ago

You know what would be a really nice HN feature.. when you submit a URL it can be flagged as "pay per view" and I can have a profile setting to filter them out.

encryptluks23• 5 years ago

HN... Where all the techies use a janky website up talk about their non-janky web projects.

dcposch• 5 years ago

Exactly the opposite, actually.

HN is an exceptionally clean, minimalist website. Instant page loads. No ads, no "accept cookie" banner, no autoplaying media, in fact no media of any kind, no engagement-maximizing algorithm. Quality moderation via dedicated human mods.

Then everyone comes here to talk about their Svelte ESnext 69.0 x serverless kubernetes 3d metaverse animated gif NFT marketplace subscription-based growth hack horror they're about to inflict on the public.

rowanG077• 5 years ago

HN is by far the least janky website I use.

tenebrisalietum• 5 years ago

No bullshit != janky.

Janky is 50MB of Javascript that doesn't load all at once so things jump around ocnstantly at the start, only to display 1/3 of the text of an article before you insert 3 ads but I won't know that until I click past the cookie warning and the "Please subscribe" popup that happens when I scroll more than 100 pixels.

fouc• 5 years ago

Simplest solution would be to write it at the end of the title. Something like [paywall] or (paywall) perhaps?

It would be nice if HN posts could include an "alt link" which would be paywall free. (like an archive.is link or similar)

ricardobeat• 5 years ago

Been asking for this feature for half a decade.

Thorentis• 5 years ago

Would be pretty easy to make a browser extension that does this, based on a list of known pay wall sites. Could even have a "create archive.is link" button for submitting the URL to archive.is if you wanted to leave it as a comment, as many people already do.

acidburnNSA6• 5 years ago

Nuclear engineer here. In school in Ann Arbor we ran a radiation detector overnight in the lab and were able to identify several nuclides in the air leftover from weapons tests. Fun times.

Of course the dose rate from these nuclides was many orders of magnitude less than natural background so it was more a curiosity than a concern. Radiation detectors can detect single atoms decaying and attribute them to specific nuclides. Good old quantum energy levels of the nucleus.

If I could have one media wish this year, it would be that whenever someone says something is 'radioactive', everyone else asks what the dose rate is compared to natural background before talking about hazards.

roenxi• 5 years ago

Speaking as a cheerfully untrained armchair observer, we might also expect the nuclear fallout to be detectable for at least the next 50,000 years [0] on the basis that detection equipment is really sensitive. Sensitive to the point where we can detect sunny days happening several millennia ago.

This looks like silly news. They may as well just have run with "US did nuclear tests in the 1960s" or "radioactive cesium has a half life" and left it at that unless there is something to report on.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating

theptip• 5 years ago

This is the general point that most of the press and general public fail to appreciate when thinking about radiation risk.

Similarly after Fukushima, there were terrified articles about how radiation could be detected in fish across the Pacific. But as you say, at what level? Certainly orders of magnitude lower than your baseline exposure. We just have very accurate detectors!

acidburnNSA6• 5 years ago

Indeed, none of those articles said: "oh yeah and at these dose rates, you'd have to eat 330,000 kg of albacore to double your natural dose, and more than 10x more than that before you got a dose that has been shown to cause harm.

Fewer clicks and shares I guess.

https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2015-04-25-fish-from-fukushim...

rikeanimer• 5 years ago

Is bad understanding of dosimetry gonna be a thing now? I hope not. Cosmic microwave background radiation only makes your dick hard.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29761587

egberts14• 5 years ago

I wonder if this unclaimed and unrecoverable nuclear bomb is the real culprit here in North Carolina.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash

dtgriscom2• 5 years ago

"Excuse me sir, is this your nuclear bomb?" "Let me look... no, doesn't look like any of the ones I'm missing."

egberts14• 5 years ago

It’s not “missing”, just “unrecoverable “.

acidburnNSA6• 5 years ago

Nope. Unexploded nuclear bombs are not meaningfully radioactive. Radiation starts in earnest after the larger atoms split.

egberts14• 5 years ago

Rusted away metal casing in saltwater marsh, nah.

29athrowaway• 5 years ago

Veritasium has a cool video about a related topic titled "How Kodak exposed the atomic bomb".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pSqk-XV2QM

heyrhett5• 5 years ago

It's wasn't a test. Someone just poisoned all the air.

It's not a test to say "hey I'm going to poison all the air, let's see what happens".

We shouldn't call this a "test" as if it was conducted by actual scientists doing actual experiments.

nexuist7• 5 years ago

Who were these people then? To say that they weren't scientists is to say that scientists can never be held accountable because every "actual" experiment is morally and ethically righteous.

heyrhett5• 5 years ago

Morality has nothing to do with it. There can't possibly be a control variable. Would you call someone who goes around smashing things a "scientist"? What is the experiment?

acidburnNSA6• 5 years ago

Trace amounts of radiation do not poison the entire air. There is natural radiation everywhere, from rocks, from space, from our own bones. The amount remaining from the tests is not even remotely close to a health hazard.

It's all to easy to conflate 'detectable' with 'hazardous' when you're dealing with some of the most sensitive instruments on earth.

See: https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2018/01/f46/doe-ioni...

heyrhett5• 5 years ago

It's still poison. Check msds. Just because there is already poison in the air, doesn't mean people can't put more poison in the air. Just because the poison doesn't kill everyone, doesn't mean it isn't poison.

errcorrectcode4• 5 years ago

Fallout is evident in nearly everything made with atmospheric air. It's possible to tell the difference between steel made before 1945 (low-background) and after due to radionuclide contamination. Items made prior to the end of WWII are unlikely to have such trace impurities.

ycIsGarbage• 5 years ago

Yep, and apparently there's money in the old scuttled ships from before 1945.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel

Nbox9• 5 years ago

Since the cessation of atmospheric nuclear testing, background radiation has decreased to very near natural levels,[4] making special low-background steel no longer necessary for most radiation-sensitive applications, as brand-new steel now has a low enough radioactive signature that it can generally be used in such applications

Apparently there’s less money in those scuttled ships now than there was 50 years ago.

gcanyon3• 5 years ago

"at levels above 0.03 becquerels per kilogram" -- note that an average banana contains about half a gram of potassium, producing 15 Bq, or about 25,000 times the radiation from a typical serving of honey. I'm not sure if cesium sticks around in the body -- the potassium in bananas doesn't.

Robotbeat3• 5 years ago

That’s not true. Potassium is an essential mineral and our bodies are composed of it.

gcanyon3• 5 years ago

That doesn't change the fact that some potassium, in particular potassium-40, is radioactive, even in bananas, even in people:

https://xkcd.com/radiation/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose

yrro• 5 years ago

disguising itself as a major nutrient

Honey is a nutrient? I thought it was water + sugar?

Nuclear fallout is showing up in U.S. honey, decades after bomb tests

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