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Caesium13712/2/2023 Kaste's examination of single-source honey showed some trends. The prevailing winds bore the cesium eastward until the isotope was brought to earth by the plentiful rainfall of the eastern U.S. Kaste explained that what didn't fall to earth near the test sites drifted along high in the atmosphere-and into the stratosphere in the case of the larger explosions. "A single Russian bomb, the Tsar Bomb, was more than 50 times more powerful than all the Nevada and New Mexico tests combined." "But we know that the cesium-137 production from the Pacific and Russian sites was more than 400 times the production of the New Mexico and Nevada explosions," he said. The bomb tests varied in magnitude and Kaste said it's impossible to determine the precise bomb that produced the cesium-137 found in any region, let alone any specific jar of honey. and the Soviet Union at sites ranging from New Mexico and Nevada to the Marshall Islands and the Russian Arctic archipelago Novaya Zemlya. The hypothesis also addresses why cesium-137 tends to show up in some areas more than others.Ĭesium-137 is a byproduct of uranium-plutonium fission, a component of the fallout from H-bomb test explosions conducted by the U.S. Kaste offers a multistep hypothesis of how cesium-137 moved enormous distances-even crossing the Pacific Ocean-to end up in jars of honey from hives on America's east coast. Elmore of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and Paul Volante '20, who was a member of the COLL 150 seminar that uncovered the phenomenon. The research was published in "Bomb 137Cs in modern honey reveals a regional soil control on pollutant cycling by plants," in the journal Nature Communications. "I eat more honey now than I did when I started this project." "I'm not trying to tell people they shouldn't eat honey. Jim Kaste, an associate professor in the university's Department of Geology, reports that 68 of 122 honey samples from Maine to Florida show varying amounts of cesium-137.Ĭesium-137 contamination of food raised concerns following the nuclear incidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima, but Kaste said that the levels of cesium-137 he's found in honey is far below the levels that prompted authorities to pull food from the market after those nuclear plant disasters. ![]() All rights reserved.The isotope is cesium-137, a relic of atom bomb tests conducted during the Cold War. Moreover, marked variability in TFs was found between different plant species growing at the same site, whereas such differences were not found for reindeer lichens.Ĭhernobyl contamination Green plants Lichens Site variability Time series Transfer factors.Ĭopyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. 25-30 years after the Chernobyl accident, 137Cs levels in lichens and green plants were significantly dependent on the levels in soil (R 2 between 0.53 and 0.57), but there were also some significant differences in transfer between sampling sites. the ratio between activity concentration in vegetation and activity density in soil) during the period 1986-2012 was not as pronounced as for lichens: Some species showed significant decrease with time, while others did not. For green plants, decline in transfer factors (TF) (i.e. For later years there seems to be a continuous re-contamination which results in a "steady state" where time-trends are mainly governed by physical decay of 137Cs. ![]() For lichens, relatively fast decrease in contamination levels was observed during the first decade after the Chernobyl fallout (ecological half-time of about 3 years). ![]() Altogether, more than 700 individual vegetation samples were considered. The investigation comprised of field studies covering the period 2011-2016, and a compilation of studies and data for the preceding period (1986-2010). The present study summarizes three decades of studies on 137Cs transfer to various species of lichens, graminoids, herbs and woody plants across a ~3000 km 2 area used as mountain pasture for reindeer and other ruminants.
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