While exposure to high concentrations of cesium-137 can increase cancer risks and even cause burns or death, it’s a number that sounds scarier than it actually is. Yet when Buesseler arrived at the site with his research team two months after the initial meltdown, he found the ocean had diluted it to just 100,000 times the normal amount. The ocean around Fukushima was originally contaminated with 50 million times the normal amount of cesium-137. While the debris started showing up a while ago, the stuff that had the potential to be really sinister, such as radioactive element cesium-137, which was found last week off the coast of British Columbia, is just now arriving. But about a year and a half ago, we saw more and more calls of people asking about swimming in Santa Cruz, and should they move their homes to be safe, because they had seen visually the debris show up.” There was a right to be concerned those first few months. to have a strong response- the public,” he explains from his office at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. studying the fallout of the A-Bomb tests from the ’60s, is no stranger to digging through radioactive data. At least for now.īuesseler, who earned his Ph.D. Alarmist fringe sites were quick to herald everything up to an alleged collapse of the Pacific fishery as the result of this four-year, trans-ocean trek.īut Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist specializing in marine chemistry and geochemistry who has been tracking the radiation since the earthquake, says there isn’t much to worry about. Radioactive elements from Japan’s Fukushima disaster were found in the ocean on the U.S.
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