California: Elevated Radiation Levels in Coastside
January 7th, 2014Via: Half Moon Bay Review:
An amateur video of a Geiger counter showing what appear to be high radiation levels at a Coastside beach has drawn the attention of local, state and federal public health officials. Since being posted last week, the short video has galvanized public concerns that radioactive material could be landing on the local coastline after traveling from Japan as a result of the 2011 meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors.
Government officials say they are looking into the video shot on Dec. 23 and performing their own sampling of the beaches, but they have found no indication so far that radiation levels were hazardous.
“It’s not something that we feel is an immediate public health concern,” said Dean Peterson, county environmental health director. “We’re not even close to the point of saying that any of this is from Fukushima.”
First posted last week on YouTube, the seven-minute video shows the meter of a Geiger counter as an off-camera man measures different spots on the beach south of Pillar Point Harbor. The gadget’s alarm begins ringing as its radiation reading ratchets up to about 150 counts per minute, or roughly five times the typical amount found in the environment.
Counts per minute is a standard way for Geiger counters to measure radiation, but it does not directly equate to the strength or its hazard level to humans. Those factors depend on the type of radioactive particles and isotope.
Nonetheless, the video went viral online, gaining nearly 400,000 views in the last week.
In a blog entry, the unidentified poster of the video noted that he has been monitoring local beaches for two years before noticing a sudden rise in radiation levels in recent days. The Review was not immediately able to contact the man who made the video.
In the following days, other amateurs with Geiger counters began posting similar videos online. The videos follow other alarming news last month that starfish were mysteriously disintegrating along the West Coast, a trend that has not been linked yet to any cause. Past computer simulations had indicated that radioactive cesium-137 from the Fukushima reactors could begin appearing on West Coast shores by early 2014. Those findings, published in August by the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems in Spain, also noted that any radioactive material that crossed the Pacific would likely be diluted and fall below international safety levels.
County health officials first learned of the radiation levels last week, and they sent their own inspector on Dec. 28 to Pacifica with a Geiger counter. Using a different unit, the county inspector measured the beach to have a radiation level of about 100 micro-REM per hour, or about five times the normal amount. REM stands for “Roentgen equivalent man,” a measurement of the dosage and statistical biological effects presented by radiation.
Research Credit: RP
Possible birth mutation/defect caused by Fuku radioactive plume in North Pacific?
Conjoined gray whale calves discovered in Baja California lagoon; find could be a first
http://www.grindtv.com/outdoor/nature/post/conjoined-gray-whale-calves-discovered-in-baja-california-lagoon-find-could-be-a-first/
NOTE THE GRAY WHALE RANGE:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cypron-Range_Eschrichtius_robustus.svg
Gestation period is approximately 13.5 months.
The chances of radiation from Japan causing this spike are extremely low. Meanwhile, there are several local nuclear power plants within spitting distance of this beach.
All of this concern about Fukushima makes everyone less likely to point fingers where they almost certainly belong -at the local plants. And that’s just how the industry wants it.