#cesium-137

Scientists finally know why Germany’s wild boar are surprisingly radioactive

Finally!

tl;dr: Chernobyl's not to blame. The boar eat truffles whose root(?) systems reach down to layers of soil containing cesium-137 fallout from 1950s-60s nuclear weapons tests. Its half-life is 30 years, so it’s only ¼ as potent as it was, but I guess that’s enough. Sadly, the boar do not glow in the dark.

(Cesium is one of my favorite elements, in a macabre way. My other favorite is iridium, just in case you’re looking for gift ideas.)

Also, please enjoy this photo of adorable radioactive boarlets;

My 52 Weeks With Christie: A 2022 Revisit to The Pale Horse Part 3 On September 13, 1987 a security guard failed to show up for his shift at an abandoned medical clinic in Goiania, Brazil. This seemingly unremarkable event set into motion events that would eventually cumulate into a mass cesium-137 radiation event — second only in size and severity to Chernobyl. On that fateful day, taking…

It's known as "The Cesium-137 Accident" ("O acidente do Césio-137" in Portuguese), and it's a Level 5 in the nuclear accident scale. For reference, Chernobyl was a 7.

A couple garbage collectors wandered into an abandoned hospital, looking for anything worth collecting and selling. They came across a radiotherapy machine, and tore it apart, looking to sell its parts.

They found a capsule containing a powder that glowed a bright blue, especially in the dark. It was a radioactive isotope of cesium, used in radiotherapy at the time. They took it home to look at, and in a couple days fell ill.

It ended up in a family's home and they broke the capsule to touch the powder, and some of the children even played with it, putting it on their faces and pretending it was makeup.

Soon enough lots of people would visit that home to look at the strange blue powder, until all members of the family became severely ill. One of their children, Leide das Neves, ended up ingesting the powder, because she ate a meal without washing her hands, after playing with it.

Soon enough the local government isolated the area and took everyone they could track as having come into contact with the material to be tested for radiation, except they weren't informed of what was happening. Imagine being taken away from your home with a bunch of other people, taken to a strange place, being scanned with a strange device that if it beeped, would cause you to be isolated. 112,000 people were examined for radioactive contamination with 249 having significant levels of radioactive material in or on their body.

“A Ukrainian firefighter takes a break after a sleepless night in #Chornobyl area where forests have been burning for the last week. 300 firefighters are extinguishing the fires 24/7.”

Fukushima’s Radioactive Waste Is Leaking Into the Soil and Water

It doesn’t take a science degree to know that the ocean currents were going to transport that waste or that it was going to seep deeper into the soil.

Food chain and environment FAIL.

New research published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that radioactive cesium from the Fukushima nuclear power plant is collecting in the sands and groundwater along a 60-mile (100-km) stretch of coastline near the facility.

Cesium-137 is a radioactive isotope of cesium (a soft, silvery-gold metal) that’s formed by nuclear fission and potentially fatal to humans when exposed to high concentrations.

The scientists who led the study, Virginie Sanial of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Seiya Nagao of Kanazawa University, say the levels of radiation “are not of primary concern” to public health, but that this new and unanticipated source “should be taken into account in the management of coastal areas where nuclear power plants are situated.”

My 52 Weeks With Christie: A 2022 Revisit to The Pale Horse Part 2 In fairness to all the scientists studying Prussian Blue, uncovering its curative properties couldn’t really come about until someone discovered Thallium. A feat which finally happened….157 years after Prussian Blue’s in a moment of scientific synchronicity.  As it turned out both Sir William Cooks and Claude-Auguste Lamy…