DATA DRIVEN VIEWPOINT: Sometimes the big news stories can only be seen by the shadows that they cast.  You would think that it would be easy to find copious updates on the radiation impact Fukushima is having on the fishing industry, US food production, global radiation distribution, etc. You would be mistaken. The relatively large amount of media coverage the Fukushima disaster initially generated has diminished to the point of near silence.  Maybe my own internet search skills are to blame, but even having to run a search on Fukushima’s radioactive legacy for North America is an warning sign to which journalists and the media should be paying attention. There was this month (November, 2012) a scientific study published regarding the release of radiation from Japan, but its focus is primarily on how tracing  the travel of radionuclides gives insight into atmospheric air circulation in the Northern Hemisphere.

I would be interested in learning more about what the US and Canadian governments are doing to monitor radiation levels, track distribution rates and study how it may or may not be impacting our food supply. If any of you reading this comes across such information, please post links here to the comments section below.  If you search but can’t find information, that is news worth also, so please comment about your efforts also.  Thank you.

Science of The Total Environment

Volume 438, 1 November 2012, Pages 80–85

Tracking the complete revolution of surface westerlies over Northern Hemisphere using radionuclides emitted from Fukushima

• M.A. Hernández-Ceballos^a, G.H. Hong^b, R.L. Lozano^a, Y.I. Kim^c, H.M. Lee^b, S.H. Kim^b, S.-W. Yeh^d, J.P. Bolívar^a, M. Baskaran^e

• ^a Department of Applied Physics, University of Huelva, Huelva, Spain
• ^b Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute, Ansan 426–744, South Korea
• ^c Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute, Uljin 767–813, South Korea
• ^d Department of Environmental Marine Science, Hanyang University, Ansan, 426–791, South Korea
• ^e Department of Geology, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA

• http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2012.08.024, How to Cite or Link Using DOI

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