Germany's radioactive boars a legacy of Chernobyl
BERLIN – For a look at just how long radioactivity can hang around, consider Germany's wild boars.
A quarter century after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union carried a cloud of radiation across Europe, these animals are radioactive enough that people are urged not to eat them. And the mushrooms the pigs dine on aren't fit for consumption either.
Germany's experience shows what could await Japan — if the problems at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant get any worse.
The German boars roam in forests nearly 950 miles (1,500 kilometers ) from Chernobyl. Yet, the amount of radioactive cesium-137 within their tissue often registers dozens of times beyond the recommended limit for consumption and thousands of times above normal.
"We still feel the consequences of Chernobyl's fallout here," said Christian Kueppers, a radiation expert at Germany's Institute for Applied Ecology in Freiburg.
3 comments:
This reminds me of that Simpsons episode where Bart, Milhouse, and Nelson leave a screening of Naked Lunch and Nelson complains, "I can think of at least two things wrong with that title"
I hate being disappointed by headlines. Every time I see a headline along the lines of "Bad News for Sarah Palin", I click on the link hoping to read about her hand getting caught in a garbage disposal or a missile blowing up her entire family but it's always a letdown.
HAHA, so true. The CNN site always fools me with those Sarah Palin articles. The headline will be, "Bad News for Sarah Palin" and when you go to the story you find out that her favorite restaurant is closing down or something.
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