Testing milk for radioactive iodine contamination
Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2011 4:30 am
There's a US government FAQ at Frequently Asked Questions | Japanese Nuclear Emergency: Radiation Monitoring | US EPA
It's not bad, as FAQs go. It does agree there's a maximum contaminant level for various radioactive isotopes. It agrees that contaminated milk carries Iodine 131 into the food chain and that the EPA has a maximum contaminant level, above which milk should presumably be destroyed rather than sold. We destroyed several weeks worth after an unfortunate fire at Windscale/Sellafield, and stopped the sale of a lot of Welsh hill-sheep after Chernobyl. They caused Geiger counters to click, apparently.
Is any milk currently being destroyed in mainland USA? Because EPA monitoring has started to turn up milk samples that exceed radioactive Iodine 131 contamination limits by, so far, up to a factor of three times. The government data is at RadNet Laboratory Analysis | Socrata | Making Data Social and easily found by filtering the Sample Type to "milk" and sorting the I-131 column in reverse order. The top figure, 18 pico-Curies per litre, is six times higher than the maximum permitted contaminant level of 3 but that, I think is in Hawaii. The figure below it, 8.9, is in Arkansas. There seem remarkably few tests, given the size of the USA and the prevailing wind direction.
As with BSE, a policy of sparse checking allows officials to say without contradiction that there's no problem.
Would anyone like to buy a Geiger counter and post their own findings?
It's not bad, as FAQs go. It does agree there's a maximum contaminant level for various radioactive isotopes. It agrees that contaminated milk carries Iodine 131 into the food chain and that the EPA has a maximum contaminant level, above which milk should presumably be destroyed rather than sold. We destroyed several weeks worth after an unfortunate fire at Windscale/Sellafield, and stopped the sale of a lot of Welsh hill-sheep after Chernobyl. They caused Geiger counters to click, apparently.
Is any milk currently being destroyed in mainland USA? Because EPA monitoring has started to turn up milk samples that exceed radioactive Iodine 131 contamination limits by, so far, up to a factor of three times. The government data is at RadNet Laboratory Analysis | Socrata | Making Data Social and easily found by filtering the Sample Type to "milk" and sorting the I-131 column in reverse order. The top figure, 18 pico-Curies per litre, is six times higher than the maximum permitted contaminant level of 3 but that, I think is in Hawaii. The figure below it, 8.9, is in Arkansas. There seem remarkably few tests, given the size of the USA and the prevailing wind direction.
As with BSE, a policy of sparse checking allows officials to say without contradiction that there's no problem.
Would anyone like to buy a Geiger counter and post their own findings?
