# Grocery Shopping



## Kathrinjapan

It's been a little over 3 weeks since I have moved here and today for some reason while shopping at Nissin I was feeling a little overwhelmed by the food issue. I am grateful for stores like Nissin which post where food is coming from but then I start feeling all panicky thinking about the radiation and the food/milk I'm buying and wondering if anyone knows what they are talking about. I try to buy things in the Southernmost regions but according to the empty spots on the sholves so do a lot of other people but then I wonder who's to say the water isn't running downhill?

I feel like there are 2 schools of thought: 
1) People who are REALLY into all the regions and learning what comes from where
2) People who don't seem to think about it.

Thoughts?


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## Rube

At first I was concerned about it but I gave up because it was a bit overwhelming. I don't think you can go wrong by buying produce from the south, the contamination doesn't travel that far. The foods that have made the news are: spinach, green tea and beef which was fed with contaminated grass.

The official government line is that the levels are too low to cause health risks but I don't believe that 100%. What I do believe is that at our ages we're pretty save, grow old before it has any chance. If I had a baby I would have left the country by now though to be honest.


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## larabell

Kathrinjapan said:


> Thoughts?


An interesting report showed up today on Japan Probe (japanprobe dot com) about the testing that's being done on a daily basis and where you can access the actual data. Apparently they've been testing meat, fish, and milk on a regular schedule (no mention of produce or other stuff) but there aren't enough test facilities to test everything. Let me know if you have trouble finding the article and I'll see if I can post the link.

I'm not too worried. Right after the initial explosions everyone in the country with a Geiger counter started waving it around and some even put their data online. Between the testing the government is doing and all the amateurs waving their Geiger counters around, I'm betting that anything unusual would be noticed and reported fairly quickly. Of course, that's just a wild guess -- but this particular cat is out of the bag already so I don't really think there is any kind of huge cover-up going on -- nor do I think that's even possible at this point. But it's probably also not possible to completely prevent some tainted product from falling through the cracks, as we've already seen.

I also don't side with those who believe anything above zero is the kiss of death. If "home" were, for example, Denver, then between the flight home and the high altitude, it's quite possible you'd actually encounter less radiation staying in Japan. But opinions, even knowledgeable ones, are all over the map because this isn't exactly something that one would intentionally replicate in a research lab.

Ionizing radiation affects the body by breaking molecules -- especially DNA molecules. It's a crap shoot whether any given breakage will cause trouble but, break enough of them and trouble isn't far behind. But the body recycles old cells on a regular basis. That's why low levels of ionizing radiation -- like what we encounter every day from natural sources -- doesn't pose a substantial risk to health.

Anything above zero decreases your odds, obviously, but you can't get to zero no matter where you live so it's back to the crap shoot. Buying things from down South loads the dice, so to speak, in your favor. But if you happen to partake of the occasional ice cream bar made from Fukushima milk, I really don't think it's going to kill 'ya. Just my gut feel, though... YMMV.


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## Rube

Their testing is bogus though. The beef was tested only on the outside of the animal which means nothing because the cows were eating the continmated feed. When they tested other produce they gave it a strong wash before testing and so on.


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## larabell

Rube said:


> When they tested other produce they gave it a strong wash before testing and so on.


Given the situation, I'd expect the growers (or, at least, the distributors) to wash the produce before selling it anyway. And, if they didn't, I sure would. We know anything that was lying around outside for the first few weeks after the quake is likely to be covered with dust of questionable origin -- I'd be more interested in knowing what I *can't* simply wash off.



> The beef was tested only on the outside of the animal which means nothing because the cows were eating the continmated feed.


Well... If they're using the machines shown in the JP article to do the testing, I kinda doubt they shoved the whole cow into the machine. One question is how many of us rank-and-file folks eat all that much Japanese beef. I do on occasion but the bulk of what I consume beef-wise comes from Australia or elsewhere -- and not because of the radiation, either.


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## Rube

larabell said:


> Given the situation, I'd expect the growers (or, at least, the distributors) to wash the produce before selling it anyway. And, if they didn't, I sure would.


They don't. The point is that produce they claimed was not contiminated was before it was washed. I call that lying. There is a reason why something like 60% of people have lost trust in the government over their testing.



larabell said:


> Well... If they're using the machines shown in the JP article to do the testing, I kinda doubt they shoved the whole cow into the machine.


So you think since a cow is too big to fit into the machine it's excusable? I have no idea what your point is to be honest. They did a light check on live cows, on their skin. Only after the meat had been distrubted across the nation did they bother to actually check samples of the meat. 



larabell said:


> One question is how many of us rank-and-file folks eat all that much Japanese beef. I do on occasion but the bulk of what I consume beef-wise comes from Australia or elsewhere -- and not because of the radiation, either.


You're missing the point, it doesn't matter if you don't buy domestic beef, what matters is that the government completely failed to properly test it and it reached market. It's hopefull wishing to assume that beef is the only thing they've missed. And to answer your question, I've never bought imported beef here, up to now the domestic has always been of a much better quality and taste. The imported beef isn't fit for your plate in my opinion.


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## Rube

I think this piece gives a good take on it

"The revelations by the government this month that contaminated meat reached Japanese markets have intensified food safety concerns in Japan, underscoring the government’s inability to control the spread of radioactive material into the nation’s food.

Radioactive material has been detected in a range of produce, including spinach, tea leaves, milk and fish. Contaminated hay has been found at farms more than 85 miles from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant, suggesting that the radioactive fallout has reached a wider area than first suspected.

Still, because of a severe shortage of testing equipment, and local governments that are still swamped with disaster relief, only a small percentage of farm products grown in the region get checked for radiation.

The government has suspended agricultural shipments from within a radius of about 12 miles around the Fukushima plant, as well as a number of other identified radiation “hot spots.” But farms outside those areas, even those relatively close to the plant, have faced few restrictions in shipping their produce.

For months the government balked at placing a wider ban on produce from the Fukushima region despite sporadic discoveries of contaminated produce, for fear of bringing fresh confusion in the disaster-stricken area, putting thousands more people out of work and adding to growing compensation claims for Tokyo Electric Power, which operates the Fukushima plant. "


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## Kathrinjapan

Speaking as someone who in a former life worked in a nuclear clinic and administered radiopharmaceuticals I wonder if we are not asking the wrong questions. Radioisotopes decay over time and become less "hot". It seems as though our concerns should lay not with current meat and produce but with it's 2nd,3rd, 4th generations. 
It would be more informative to know:
1) what types of radioisotopes are involved
2) half lives
3) date of exposure (although this may be obvious)

Anyhow, that's my ¥2... I appreciate any and all comments and literature.

K
/SNIP/


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## Rube

The news is pretty good at telling us what kind of isotopes and the one that everybody is most concerned about is cesium. Just last week kids in Yokohama were feed beef continimated with it in their school lunches at levels above what the government has set so we are still not out of the woods it seems.


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## larabell

Cesium is an element, not an isotope. The specific isotopes that have been mentioned, and their half-lives are I-131 (8 days), Cs-137 (30 years), and Sr-90 (29 years). There were also trace amounts of Plutonium detected on-site but the article that mentioned that also said you could pick up trace amounts of Plutonium just about anywhere in Japan -- and there hasn't been much mention of it since. NPR (npr dot org) published an article called "Radiation by the Numbers" that included a chart at the bottom with other information about each of the major isotopes, including where they tend to accumulate in the body.

I recall seeing the decay chain for Cs-137 published somewhere but I didn't save the link. According to Wikipedia, Cs-137 decays to a short-lived radioactive isotope of Barium and then to non-radioactive Barium. Given that Barium is used to take X-rays of your insides when you get a physical, I doubt it's much of a worry -- which could be why nobody has brought it up.

I'm also curious about the Uranium/Plutonium combination, which has to make up the bulk of what's in those fuel rods. There hasn't been much mention of that in the media -- but those elements are pretty heavy... their escape may be limited to the plant and its immediate surroundings.


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## Rube

larabell said:


> Cesium is an element, not an isotope.


Well thank you Mr. Wizard, my life wouldn't be complete if you didn't point that out.


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