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Both cesium-134 and cesium-137 increase in latest San Francisco Bay Area milk sample (CHART)

Published: September 15th, 2011 at 4:59 pm ET
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UCB Milk Sampling, UC Berkeley:

San Francisco Bay Area milk

Best Buy Date: September 12, 2011:

  • Cesium-134: .055 becquerels/liter
  • Cesium-137: .059 becquerels/liter

Best Buy Date: August 22, 2011:

  • Cesium-134: .047 becquerels/liter
  • Cesium-137: .052 becquerels/liter

SOURCE: UC Berkeley

Published: September 15th, 2011 at 4:59 pm ET
By
Email Article Email Article
69 comments

Related Posts

  1. 220 days later: Radiation levels in San Francisco-area milk remain above EPA’s Max Contaminant Level — Cesium-137 continues steady increase that began in August October 20, 2011
  2. Radioactive cesium in San Francisco Bay Area milk close to exceeding EPA’s Maximum Contaminant Level August 29, 2011
  3. San Francisco Bay Area milk sample has highest amount of Cesium-137 since last June — Almost double EPA’s maximum contaminant level April 10, 2012
  4. Highest level of radioactive cesium in San Francisco-area milk since September 2011 — Now at 150% of EPA’s maximum contaminant limit (CHART) February 7, 2012
  5. Over EPA limit: Cesium levels in San Francisco area milk now higher than 6 months ago January 16, 2012
September 15th, 2011 | Tags: , | Category: Milk, San Francisco Bay Area
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69 comments to Both cesium-134 and cesium-137 increase in latest San Francisco Bay Area milk sample (CHART)

  • TheMysticWizard1
    September 15, 2011 at 5:18 pm

    So… If I drank 17 liters of milk I would ingest roughly 1 bq of cesium 134 and 137, correct? Doesn’t seem like much, but I would prefer none at all. This concerns me nest because my son is almost 2 and loves milk. It’s tough telling where milk comes from. Living in the SF bay area I assume a lot of it is local. Glad someone else’s greed for money can have a potential impact of my families health and well being. Thanks tepco.


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    • TheMysticWizard1
      September 15, 2011 at 5:20 pm

      *nest=most


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      • socal stukncali
        September 15, 2011 at 6:17 pm

        Hey mysticwizard: Try getting your son to dry Silk Almond Milk. It’s way better for him and also this website enviroreporter.com has tested to almond milk and continues to and it seems safe. It also has less sugar and more calcium than regular milk. Also look into herbs for you and your son. Try going to the library and getting books with information on herbs and what they can do for you. Lots of herbs help detox and protect against radiation and some others repair damage done to DNA


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      • lam335 lam335
        September 15, 2011 at 7:21 pm

        Also–I think Silk’s organic unsweetened soy milk (it’s in a green carton) tastes more like real milk than regular soy milk; I’ve been using it in cereal since Fukushima. With soy I’ve heard that you should really stick to organic because the non-organic gets sprayed with too many pesticides.


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        • westcoastgirl westcoastgirl
          September 16, 2011 at 12:24 am

          And is most likely genetically modified…


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          • Cindy Cindy
            September 17, 2011 at 1:35 pm

            Yep! Westcoastgirl is right. 90+ percent of soy is Genetically Modified. Go with either Almond or Rice milk. Be careful w/ almond… the almonds might have been sprayed w/ hexane/hexene.


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          • lam335 lam335
            September 17, 2011 at 10:49 pm

            With regard to almond milk, most almonds in this country, including those used in Silk’s Almond Milk (I inquired with their customer service people this spring) come from in California. I am not consuming anything grown on the West Coast for the foreseeable future.

            I haven’t been able to find out where the rice is from.


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        • lam335 lam335
          September 18, 2011 at 5:42 pm

          Actually, I just found this information about soy:

          “Alfalfa, clover, soybeans, and leafy vegetables have a greater tendency to absorb long-lived radioactive strontium than cereal grains, grasses, corn, potatoes, and fruits. Guidance on suggested crops to plant will come from USDA county defense boards.”
          http://www.ki4u.com/illwind.htm

          So I guess I will try harder to find out where the rice comes from (hopefully not the US west coast or Asia).

          (Incidentally, Berkeley’s dept. of nuke engineering contradicts what the above statement says about potatoes < http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/4368 >).


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          • lam335 lam335
            September 18, 2011 at 6:41 pm

            I forgot to add the Berkeley potato link, for anyone who hasn’t seen it already:

            http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/4368


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          • Pallas89juno Pallas89juno
            September 18, 2011 at 7:37 pm

            Dear Iam: I’d have to say that I’m very suspicious of the advice that favors potatoes/root veggies over seed foods. I’m not sure what to think yet about leafy veggies. Advising eating potatoes doesn’t make any intuitive or scientific sense from what I’ve read. Of course, I don’t mean that at all as a snub against you. I just need to see more data and sources on this topic. I recommend studying the data and literature on the way plants behaved in Chernobyl’s “Red Forest” where plants tended to store all manner of radionuclides in all starchy vacuoles [in all non-reproductive tissues] of stems, roots and tubers and tended to protect their germ (seeds, nuts) from the worst radionuclide contamination. This makes sense because plants are constantly at the mercy of high solar radiation of various kinds relative to living things that can hide from the sun or don’t generate food by bearing their structures to the sun. The wood in trees adjacent to Chernobyl after 1986 turned a mushy orange-red color in their rings (hence the name of the post Chernobyl event forest adjacent to the plant there), but the seeds of both coniferous and non-coniferous trees were generally fairly well protected from radionuclide uptake. As far as leaves go, I can’t say. I don’t think sensitive enough testing is being done at this time on uptake by leaf crops, or if it is–we’re not getting the data, so I don’t know, myself that there’s much to go on there. The strontium focus is interesting…


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    • Darth
      September 15, 2011 at 10:56 pm

      The Federal Safety Guidelines (http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts158.pdf) for liquids in USA is 3 Picocuries/Liter or 0.111 Bq/L. This safety level assumes that only 10% of your food is contaminated with radiation. If ALL food is contaminated then these safe levels need to be divided by 10 – or 0.0111 Bq/L.


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    • Arizonan Arizonan
      September 16, 2011 at 1:02 am

      Mystic,
      If you add .055 Bq/L C134 + .059 Cs137 Bq/L = 0.114 Bq/L X 17 litres = 1.9 Bqs/L. (San Fran, enenews, 9-15-11)

      This is obviously such a small amount of radiation in comparison with what some areas of Japan are experiencing that it is almost embarrassing to discuss it. After drinking 17 litres, almost two atoms per second would have disintegrated inside your body. One becquerel = one atomic disintegration per second. Cs137 is beta and gamma emitter.

      For comparison’s sake, I searched enenews for all “milk” references since March. Bizarrely, I couldn’t find any stories with cow milk results IN JAPAN, except for human breast milk, and then it was measured in Bq/kg not Bq/L, and you can’t compare the two unless you know the density of what you are comparing; although 1 litre water = 1 kilogram as it happens. That figure was 36.3 Bq/kg, highest of four women from Chiba Prefecture (April 21, 2011). All other milk stories relate to readings from various US states. So, it looks like there’s been a huge and total blackout on actual milk contamination numbers/isotopes in Japan; but you can’t see what’s not there until you look. If it got translated into English I think the enenews aggregator would have picked it up; at least it has picked up more stories than any other site I have been on.

      One of the highest milk rad readings in the US was found in Phoenix, AZ on 4-1-11, of 44 p/Ci/L (picocuries per litre). (Don’t you love how the nuke industry can’t get it…


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      • Arizonan Arizonan
        September 16, 2011 at 1:03 am

        (Don’t you love how the nuke industry can’t get it together to standardize its measurements? A-holes.) Anyway, 3 picocuries/L = 0.111 Bq/L so if you divide 44 by 3, and multiply by 0.111, this equals 1.6 Bq/L of milk in Phx. Again, far below the only released figure on milk from Japan that I could find, that of human breast milk. Where are the cow milk figures for Japan since March??!!?

        I disagree with Darth’s calculation of dividing the becquerels if ALL food is contaminated. Clearly one should multiply the becquerels if ALL food is contaminated; one would be ingesting more becquerels in that case, not fewer, as in Darth’s calculation.


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      • gottagetoffthegrid
        September 16, 2011 at 4:55 pm

        Arizonan,

        http://atmc.jp/food/?s=i131&q=b2a75&a=&d=14

        radiation tests from japan on various foods from various prefectures.

        its in japanese, but google translator works reasonably well.

        its up to 12.3 Bq/kg


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    • nohobear nohobear
      September 16, 2011 at 11:29 am

      Keep in mind for children, the effects of exposure are multiplied several fold because of the child’s rapid growth. 1bq for an adult might be like 5 or 10 for a child.

      Coconut milk is also very tasty, and might be a way to get away from dairy.


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    • WildTurnip WildTurnip
      September 16, 2011 at 3:58 pm

      To find out where your dairy product comes from, enter the code from the carton or container at this site: http://whereismymilkfrom.com/


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  • selfsovereign
    September 15, 2011 at 5:37 pm

    Please visit this russian womans site

    http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/journal/volume5.html

    She rides her motorcycle into the exclusion zone, taking pictures and talking to any people left.

    Her photos are amazing

    She offers her take on Fukushima and governments perogatives when dealing with this sort of pandoras box issue.


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    • theypoisonus
      September 15, 2011 at 6:13 pm

      That is a wonderful source, selfsoverign

      If anyone knows about this it is the people that live in Russia and the Providences ! imo.

      That statement under How do you Feel About Fukushima:

      “Comparing Chernobyl and Fukushima is like comparing gangrene with cancer. For us Chernobyl is a lost limb. Ukrainians, Belorussian and Russians have large territories and have withdrawn from Chernobyl, but Japanese appear to be in a cage with a tiger. They are completely surrounded by ocean. No place to go.. Fukushima affects more people, it eats like a cancer. I can see already the huge spots of metastizing rot japanese officials busily bent on whitewashing.”

      WOW
      I will thoroughly enjoy reading her info.
      Thank You !


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    • Be Still My Beating Heart
      September 16, 2011 at 3:15 pm

      Did not book mark the pages…
      however after spending my month of April reading everything I could about Chernobyl, (not then realizing that the lie being surpressed about Fuku was eating at me,) I learned this woman is bunk.
      One of the guides on the ‘new’ guided tours they give in the dead zone said she remembers this woman and her boyfriend on the tour bus and she she didn’t know why they brought their motorcycle helmets and jackets to take pictures with. The guide also said that the pictures on her site of the deserted homes are the same ones that everyone can drive past until you get to the restricted zone. The guide also said NO ONE is allowed to ride a motorcycle into the zone.
      However I also read else where that a mink coat was worth a bottle of vodka to the ‘zone’ guards to get it smuggled out of Pripyat.
      All thos peoples pocessions, all the stores, the cars that were not buried, the graveyard of dead fire trucks and helocopters, many of them have been stripped and resold all around the world. They even took the metal molding off the windows. and the silver out of the gas masks in the kindergarden, (that is why the masks are all over the floor, not because they used them.) A good bribe or walking in over the bridge of death,and it was free goods for the stealing. Quite a black market in scrap metal kept some people going back for more.
      Maybe she did bribe the guards to get in. Her father is a nuclear something according to her and she says that you can…


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  • red red wine red red wine
    September 15, 2011 at 5:44 pm

    Milk, Shmilk, Bequerels, Shmequerels..as long as it is white, homogenized and the cow doesn’t glow, “what me worry”.

    red red wine


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    • Pallas89juno Pallas89juno
      September 15, 2011 at 5:56 pm

      Dear Red Red: Are you unaware of the fact that it is “low-level INTERNALIZED” radiation absorption that is many times more dangerous than nearly external exposure could be? Please check the research on this. Find books on DOSIMETRY and INTERNAL EMITTERS. There may be some good articles above with some reasonable citations with which to follow through. Cows are intensely good bioaccumulators of toxins overall and for radiation is no exception. Humans are also tremendously efficient bioaccumulators of toxins in our fats and tissues, which is why I, gently, discourage well-meaning moms to avoid breast feeding. Also, remember that cheese is about 8x as dense as milk, and therefore 8x the density of the already high dose from bioaccumulation of radionuclide contamination. However, and this is not meant in a personal way because I “feel” (emotionally) the same (not intuition or rationally)about food in that if I want to eat it, why can’t I? Remember that, more true for many of us than for others, the part of the brain that governs food selection choices is not rational and is the same one that governs religious ideation (think Teabaggers), which is a fact, long ago intuited by meat and dairy business consortiums, such as the Meat Board and the Dairy Association. Remember the Food Pyramid, recently, but also or still incorrectly revised (based on the real independentally and not meat/dairy biz funded research), that has been around since nearly the beginning of the 20th…


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      • chemfood chemfood
        September 15, 2011 at 6:40 pm

        Cabot’s Extra/Seriously Sharp cheddar cheeses are aged 12-14 months. plenty of pre-fuku left for those who want to stock up. There are some pre-fuku powdered milk supplies also still available. I get mine in 50lb bags, repackage in mylar and put into the freezer.


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        • westcoastgirl westcoastgirl
          September 16, 2011 at 1:07 am

          I have still been eating aged cheese, checking to see that it’s not from the west coast, even the USA. Don’t drink milk, but it’s hard to give up yogurt. I wonder what happens with radioactive milk when it’s cultured…is it better or worse?


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      • Arizonan Arizonan
        September 16, 2011 at 1:12 am

        Pallas you dear wise one, I think Red meant it in jest….


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    • anne anne
      September 15, 2011 at 10:37 pm

      Radiation, even when unseen and with no taste, can kill you. You definitely don’t want your bones to absorb the radioactive cesium and strontium:
      Cesium-137 and Strontium-90 in Florida Milk – A Five-year Study of Distribution and Levels
      http://nuclearhistory.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/cesium-137-and-strontium-90-in-florida-milk-a-five-year-study-of-distribution-and-levels/
      Fallout effects from Fukushima on the US west coast…
      “How do foods become contaminated by rainwater? It is well established that cow milk tends to reflect a concentration about 1,000 times the levels of radioiodines in the air over a pasture. This effect, called bioaccumulation, also applies (although to a lesser extent) to cesium-137 and strontium-90 in milk. The radioactive ‘distilling’ effect in the air-grass-cow-milk-human chain is enhanced when it rains because precipitation is more effective at depositing airborne radioactive debris to the ground than with ‘dry deposition.’ Even on dry feed lots, cows drink from puddles of rain water and are exposed in other ways to their rain-soaked environment….”
      http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/1944


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    • Arizonan Arizonan
      September 16, 2011 at 1:10 am

      ….for some reason somehow sometimes the human organism deals with unbearable realities by laughing…maybe it’s a form of denial (“as long as the milk is white I’ll drink it”) but in either case, humor or denial, it seems to be a way we humans have of trying to adapt to and cope with unimaginable almost incomprehensible realities. Who was it who recently wrote, after Marcoule, “ho hum, another day, another nuclear accident, ho hum”……


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  • AustralianCannonball
    September 15, 2011 at 7:46 pm

    Chemical fire and explosions in our nations capital:

    http://australiancannonball.com/2011/09/16/chemical-fire-blazes-in-act-industrial-area/

    Not nuclear related but very spectacular explosions. 10km exclusion zone set up. We can be sure of one thing. The chemicals will disappear unlike radiation.


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  • jdotg
    September 15, 2011 at 8:44 pm

    The chemicals disappear? After they kill a couple thousand plants animals and people, after these chemicals are dispersed over the land , and into your drinking water. Thats a deadly Houdini act.


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  • StillJill StillJill
    September 15, 2011 at 10:54 pm

    AustralianCannonball,…I feel the same way. Reading these reports yesterday about 1963 being such a big year for weapons testing,…that was the first time I remember getting that metalic taste/smell/vaporous sensation come over me. 1963 I was in Chicago. Nose bleeds for days,…my two sisters and I. No one ever told ‘us’ to stay inside. I don’t even know if my family knew or cared. We played outside all day, every day.


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    • AustralianCannonball
      September 15, 2011 at 10:59 pm

      @StillJill – Does the US government offer any sort of monetary compensation?

      Do they cover any health effects you may still have?

      There are people in Australia affected by weapons testing. I should look more into that. It seems people like yourself have become the forgotten victims.


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  • Sickputer
    September 16, 2011 at 12:06 am

    The “motorcycle lady” looks pretty cool, but the story is not as it seems…

    http://articles.latimes.com/2004/jul/06/world/fg-chernobyl6


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  • ChasAha ChasAha
    September 16, 2011 at 12:43 am

    I wonder what products get made with milk?
    Milk chocolate, yogurt, ice cream, 1/2 n 1/2, cheese, etc… the list goes on and on.

    So then add those little bits of consumption from other items into the equation.

    One would think that the EPA, (gov agencies and the like), would start testing ‘everything’ in order to LET PEOPLE KNOW just what it is they are ingesting.

    …or the EPA could raise the ‘acceptable’ limits.

    Gee…! I’m guessing they are going to raise the limits.


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  • maaa
    September 16, 2011 at 1:54 am

    “Interesting that “Canon” is one of the sponsors. Did you all know that Canon has factories in Fukushima to manufacture their cameras (http://bit.ly/oZHgvN)?

    I was planning to buy a new camera for my family but fortunately I checked online and found this out. I will never be buying a Canon camera again as you know they will not tell the truth about contamination just as the government in Japan has not told the truth about contaminated food.

    Japan should have known this could be an end result. Once their credibility is gone all is lost. ” http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/09/radiation-in-japan-14-of-germanys.html#comments


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  • Tacomagroove
    September 16, 2011 at 4:31 am

    ADMIN:

    Check the thread below. Majority of enenews users agreed we need you to set up a radiaiton level thread.

    We need to have a directory for united states levels (other than the epa).
    If we collect enough data, we can make claims against the parties responsible.

    The readings and sites on the web all are bogus.

    Please consider making a radiation site / thread.

    French Report: Radioactivity 10 times normal in Avignon — Cause of “anomalous increase” could be directly linked to explosion at Marcoule (CHART)


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  • Grace Grace
    September 16, 2011 at 4:47 am

    Hi Admin, also would it be a good idea to have a place to put organised non-violent actions, like as a drop down monthly diary, or something, as though I have posted links about some of these events, stuff tends to get lost.
    Thank you for your time and patience, we are all working for the greater good, this site is amazing :)


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    • Arizonan Arizonan
      September 16, 2011 at 11:56 am

      Fantastic idea! I would like to see if we could coordinate an international action to send lunch care boxes to the Fukushima workers…anyone interested? I love the idea oof a separate thread to that enables us to better DO SOMETHING rather than just reading about this disaster. It is our urgent responsibility to help shut down all nuclear power plants no matter where they are no matter what they cost no matter how long it takes.


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  • mungo mungo
    September 16, 2011 at 7:03 am

    Fukushima seafood inspection results were published on 14 September, exceeding the interim standard products such as Shiromebaru 6 2200 Becquerel / kg · flounder 1610 Becquerel / kg · Suzuki 670 Bq / kg, exceed 100 becquerels many other things too There.

    以下は厚労省が９月１４日に公表した食品中の放射性物質の検査結果について（第１９０報）の福島県の水産物の緊急時モニタリング結果より引用です。 Described the test results of radioactive substances in food is released to the ministry on September 14 (Part 190) is quoted from the results of monitoring of marine emergencies in Fukushima Prefecture.

    http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ja&tl=en&u=http://savechild.net/sample-page/yosoku


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  • mungo mungo
    September 16, 2011 at 7:06 am

    when you get to the page from the link above, click on where it says “food related”


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  • Arizonan Arizonan
    September 16, 2011 at 11:58 am

    No more seafood. Well most of us had given up on cow milk already I think.


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