BioChemistry Week 2: Radiation

Bio Chemistry Week 2: Radiation

A study conducted by Michael Pravikoff and Philippe Hubert at the National Center for Scientific Research and University of Bordeaux in France was released this past week revealing that some wines from the Napa Valley produced after 2011 contain up to twice as much radiation as prior vintages. The wines were melted to ash and then measured for cesium 137 levels, a manmade radioactive particle only produced by a  nuclear reaction. The radiation was traced directly back to the Fukishima nuclear disaster in 2011. 

Since the disaster ocean waters, soils, milk and fish have all been tested along the west coast of the US and Canada for radiation levels. Results are consistently well below standards for health risks. It is surprising how scientists and news articles characterize and contextualize these levels of radiation. Pravikoff repeated in interviews regarding Napa wines that radiation levels, “certainly aren't enough to affect your health,” yet he also claimed that, “radioactivity is part of our environment. Having nuclear power plants in the first place comes with the unavoidable consequence of having increased radiation levels on our planet.” 

Article after article makes sure to point out that levels of radioactive materials found since the fukishima disaster are lower than expected and are also lower than our myriad other sources of daily radiation exposure. Punam Thakur, a senior scientist of radiochemistry at the Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring & Research Center, an entity of New Mexico State University said, “The United States already has cesium-137 in the environment because it was testing nuclear weapons in the 1950s and 1960s. The cesium-137 from Fukushima is small compared with the radionuclides left over from the 1950s and 1960s.” The World Health Organization says that, “people are regularly exposed to more radioactive material than that which was found in food and drink outside Japan after Fukushima.” 

It is nothing to worry about because we are already being exposed to elevated levels of radiation all the time? Interesting argument. Radiation in the environment and the body is cumulative. Cesium 137 has a half life of 30.1 years and was the main component of the fallout in both fukishima and Cherynobyl. That means radiation from Chernobyl is still 50% of what it was after the original disaster. Radiation never fully degrades and is therefore compounding with every high and low level release into the environment. If a hundred sources of radiation are measured individually to be below acceptable levels, at what point will the cumulative effect be above acceptable levels? Millisieverts are the standard used to measure radiation exposure (not levels in the body). 100MsV is the lowest level at which any increase in cancer is clearly evident and this is also the  recommended limit for radiation workers every 5 years. 400 Msv per hour were recorded around fukishima after the explosions and much of it was carried by ocean and air currents across the globe. 

How can post-fukishima radiation levels now be characterized to be of little health risk when much of what was released has a 30.1 year half life? Where did it go? Perhaps our oceans and skies are large enough and produce enough movement to dissipate the radiation produced worldwide on a daily basis as well as from periodic disasters. Or perhaps the earth is more like a sponge that will soon reach its absorptive capacity. Or perhaps the many vested interests such as the food & wine industry, the nuclear energy industry, and governments who don’t want to be stuck with having to clean up the mess, are funding the science and playing down the potential long term effects of radiation exposure. Me thinks they doth protest too much!

2) So Many Cells

The variability of cell structures between humans, plants, viruses, bacteria, and fungi is a testament to the adaptability of life. Structure defines function and structure evolves to accommodate functional adaptation to our changing environment. Each of these life forms evolved to fill an available niche or need in the environment. All work together and rely on one another. How cool! It is like a household where one person likes to do the cooking and one prefers to do the cleaning and someone else prefers the shopping. Perhaps in time the cook will evolve to have knives for fingers and the shopper will develop wheels for feet and the dishwasher will spit surfactant.