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Food sources currently testing positive for radioactivity in the Pacific Northwest include spinach, kale, arugula, cilantro, grass, wild mushrooms, strawberries, milk. In China, add asparagus and cabbages. (We'll be registering them here soon as well.)
Common sense says anything exposed to large surfaces of rain or that soaks up rainwater quickly (lettuces, leafy greens, etc.) will test or begin testing radioactive. (And obviously, fish and current seaweeds carry high risk for radioactivity.)
This is a good time to eat root vegetables and stock up on legumes and things from last year's harvest. Cesium will begin to concentrate in meat and eventually, the greens will be safer and the root vegetables less safe. Generally, the lower down you eat on the food chain, the lower your concentration of absorbed and cumulative radioisotopes will be.
What you can do now: grow your own sprouts and microgreens (with deep spring water or Multi-pure water), and add dried Greens, spirulinas, chlorellas, etc. (packaged before the Japan crisis) to your smoothies and shakes.
Water: Double carbon reverse osmosis seems to be the most effective single filtration system but does not remove all radioactivity. Ionizing, with portable IonPod like devices, removes more and improves water further.
Safest of all, fill jugs at Tubb Springs or down in Mt. Shasta.
The primary, most predictable issues with radioactivity, for those of us dealing with exposure from radioactive drift, come from Radioactive Iodine 131 and Cesium 137. RI has a 1/2 life of 8 or 9 days outside the human body. Once in the human body, it's 1/2 life is 100 days. Cesium has a half life of 30 years and is currently falling into our water supplies and topsoil.
RI's dangers are thyroid cancer, which can be blocked by having enough healthy iodine; secondarily, it filters through the kidneys and can lodge in breast tissue. What you can do: have enough healthy iodine in your system, add a little baking soda to your water, add bentonite clay to your diet (I put a Tablespoon in tea water in the morning and take an additional Tablespoon once a day following a meal. Bentonite helps remove heavy metals and radioactivity.)
Cesium: is a longer term danger and harder to protect against. Long term accumulation damages soft tissues between bones, and creates bone and joint damage and cancers, and can damage lungs when born aerially. Because many people's woodpiles have been exposed to rainwater, we can anticipate aerial release of cesium from people's fireplaces next fall. As far as the topsoil, it is prudent to use gloves now when gardening and to keep dirt (and rainwater) off of bare skin.
Iodine: Essentially iodine is an elemental adaptogen that helps adjusts low or high levels of thyroid hormone. It was considered for tap water purification and nearly became (the much more healthy) alternative to chlorine. It can purify water from lakes and streams, in the event of local tap water supplies going down.
Everyone needs to make their own decisions about whether they want to boost their intake of healthy iodine. (What's an adequate amount for the level of crisis we are in? No one is actually discussing that.) 4 drops of 2% Lugol's (the kind sold in the US) is 13 mg. Personally I take 30- 50 mg. a day and have been increasing that gradually. Healthy Iodine can be taken in the form of Potassium Iodide Tablets (Iodoral is one form) or Lugol's can be added to tap water. With Lugol's, add just enough to a Mason jar to barely begin to tinge it. (Note: Lugol's is a dye and will stain teeth at higher strengths). Another way to administer iodine or to test to see if your iodine is low is to paint a small patch of your skin. Doctors usually paint about a 2x2 square. If the patch has disappeared 24 hours later, your skin is absorbing the iodine it is deficient in and you might be prudent to add some supplementation.
The recommended doses of Iodine in the event of nuclear catastrophes are 130 mg for an adult, 65 mg for a child. Many practitioners believe half of each of those amounts are adequate in an acute crisis, (though it's not terribly unusual for people on long term iodine supplementation to take either of those amounts daily.) Will healthy iodine protect you from what you may already have absorbed? No. The thyroid will absorb iodine and radioactive iodine indiscriminately, so it is essential to build and keep your non-radioactive iodine levels high. How long will one day's iodine supplementation protect you for? A mere 24 hours, and then you have to repeat the dose until or unless your iodine levels maintain themselves sufficiently.
What does thyroid cancer look like? Nodules begin to develop on the thyroid gland with long term cumulative exposure to radioactive iodine. Thyroid cancer, in a sense, is one of the most operable of all cancers; it doesn't tend to spread from the thyroid. Nodules are examined under biopsy and, if cancerous, half or the whole thyroid is removed from the throat area and the individual is placed on pharmaceutical thyroid supplementation for the remainder of his or her life. One of the more difficult aspects of this will invariably be the long term financial consequences for families with large medical bills and the individual's dependency on doctors, hospitals and surgeries for biopsies and cancer removal/ life extension.
One reason I believe so many of us have thyroid irregularities (even those of us who have not been tested) harkens back to the atomics weapons testing with its radioactive fallout from the 1950's. Additionally, as a nation we are iodine deficient and as long as there are pharmaceutical companies profiting from synthroid and levoxyl, there is no corporate motive to promote (Lugol's or) healthy natural sources of iodine supplementation.
Lugol's can be purchased at the 5% strength from Canada in a 500ml bottle. (The 5% formulas were outlawed in the US allegedly because they were being used in meth labs. You can only purchase the 2% solution in the US and usually in small amount.) From s 500 ml bottle of Lugol's, you can then transfer a working amount to a dropper bottle to drop into your water as needed.
http://www.abacohealth.com/index.php/prodid/MEDI002
You should be able to still buy Iodoral or K1 (Potassium Iodide) on Amazon.
News Sources
The EPA is failing us miserably. They regularly pull their monitors offline when radioactivity spikes, and delay the release of data for days (there are currently 37 cities with monitors offline or broken and the EPA apparently has no intention of fixing them). Behind our backs the EPA (along with the EU) has dramatically increased (up to 3x) the amount of "acceptable" radiation since the crisis in Japan began.
The corporate media, too, is not your friend and has not been forthcoming. (The largest television advertiser is GE, who built the reactors...)
To get the news, you have to go to the alternative media and internet.
As a one stop site, keep pace with http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/. I also check intelhub.com/ and beforeitsnews.com for stories related to the radiation crisis from Japan. (Note: any of these sites could get shut down any day... )
As far as I know, UC Berkeley has one of the only independent radiation monitoring stations with sophisticated equipment on the roof of the Nuclear Engineering building. Here's a link to their reports. http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/2525
To see what's happening on any given day, as far as the radioactive drift to the Pacific Northwest, use the Flexpart maps, click on USA, the weekday and the radioisotope (cesium, xenon or iodine) to see the pictures of what's coming our way. Use this to determine which days to be outdoors when you have choice.
http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/weather/news/fukushima?LANG=en&VAR=niludmanc133&HH=17
Beware that pets can bring radioisotopes into your home on their fur. Try to walk your dogs when it's not raining and hose them down, if or when possible. If you take a trip to the coast, keep them from foraging among driftwood and things that wash up on the beach.
Comparisons to X rays or cross country airplane flights are ridiculous. A cross country flight is over in 5 hours and is external. Once ingested, radioactive isotopes become a part of your body and transmit from tissues continuously. The risks are cumulative.
A French research body on radioactivity has already issued warning to pregnant women and children that the risks are "no longer negligible," to stay out of the rain and not consume items testing positive for radioactivity. South Korea shuts down its schools, issues masks and its citizens nearly universally use umbrellas on fallout days. Several Northern California papers have recommended people stay indoors on days of heavy xenon drift. Greenpeace deemed, by the beginning of April, the Japanese situation at Fukishima to already have been the equivalent of 3 separate Chernobyls. (It's worth reading the backlog of stories and posts about the Crisis in Japan on both Higgins blog and the Intel Hub.)
Nutritional Support: Consider more miso, seaweed from the before the fallout, make sure you get calcium and bone support (hopefully you are already up to date that most calciums popularly sold in stores are limestone, a substance every living thing excretes and which lodges in hardening of the arteries and into bonespurs). I use New Chapter's Bone Strength with calcium from algae which has Boron, D3 and Strontium as well, all essential for protecting your bones from absorbing harmful radioactivity. Baking soda and bentonite I have both mentioned. Additional strontium, glutamine, zeolytes and probiotics merit supplemental consideration as well.
Local Updates: The Ashland Co-Op seems to have acquired a Geiger Counter. Let them know in the Notes box you would like produce tested. Ask them to label the microgreens there are grown with spring water and grown indoors. Encourage local farmers to have or share a Geiger counter at the Growers Markets. Let them know you will gladly round up your bill or throw money into the farm hat to help them cover their costs. Consider volunteering to help farmers build sustainable green houses and cover up topsoil. Let them know you care about them and want to support them!
Questions to Explore: If local farmers add iodine distributors to water lines, will vegetables absorb healthy instead of radioactive iodine? If livestock farmers add iodine to water troughs, will beef, buffalo, eggs, chickens and milk gain protection from radioactivity? How can we protect our watersheds? (The City of Ashland is merely deferring to the EPA.) Is it worth adding Lugol's to your pet's water dish?
In Summary: Don't Panic. Get yourself educated. Be proactive. And help us figure out more solutions for local farmers, vintners and for our watershed. This is an opportunity for skill, education, common sense and banding together. This is the essence of creating sustainable communities!
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Julie Weber, MSW is an independently informed citizen who has educated herself about a wide variety of issues. The opinions expressed are her own and are not meant to serve as blanket recommendations. Everyone needs to make up their own mind about risks and safety measures. Hopefully, this essay is an information launch, widens the educational field and begins to draw some essential pieces of advocacy together.
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