Independent LAB TEST RESULTS: RadioIsotope Analysis of Hokkaido Kelp and other Samples

January 19, 2014 – Michaël Van Broekhoven

Introductory Summary & Results Overview

The investigation:  9 food samples, bought in stores in Japan (in Iwaki, Kyoto, Nara, Nagano, and Tokyo) between mid-November and early December 2013, were sent to a professional fully-certified independent quality scientific lab in the United States in mid-December 2013 for radioisotope analysis.   Samples measured from 20% to over 400% above local background radiation.

The objective was to find out which radioisotopes precisely caused the elevated radioactivity.  The aim was to check whether or not the Japanese government’s claim that “all their food is perfectly safe to eat” is true (or not) for these samples, as well as to get independent scientific data regarding the spread of radiation from the ongoing Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Disaster through ocean currents over relatively long distances.  (See more further below, where I describe each sample, and my research objectives in detail.)

The samples:

• 6 kelp seaweeds (from various parts of ‘Hokkaido’, in Northern Japan)
• 1 nori seaweed (Processed in Fukuoka,  Southern Japan)
• 1 dried Urume-Iwashi (round herring) fish snack (caught in Bungo Channel area, Japan)
• 1 Tea sample (Green Tea, growing region unknown, but from Japan)

The tests conducted were:

• All 9 samples received Gammaspectroscopy Analysis.  
• Of those 9 samples, unrelated to the gammaspectroscopy results, purely for additional scientific data:  3 kelp seaweed samples were also submitted for Plutonium analysis, Strontium-90 analysis, and Gross Alpha and Gross Beta analysis.  

— This very long blogpost is summarized in the next one, ‘the short version‘.  In this one, an enormous amount of additional details are included, from how I selected the samples, detailed samples description, more test result details, maps with locations, links to the run-up to this investigation, etc.   (Much of this blogpost was written before I had lab results, describing the samples and research objectives at length.  Additional data on natural isotopes, which I’m still waiting on, will be added (hopefully! if they become available…) in a future blogpost.)

WHY I conducted this investigation & Research Context:

My suspicion and serious concern about the main cause of Fukushima’s radioactive fallout in food grew out of my discovery that some Japanese food (mainly Hokkaido kelps) showed significantly elevated radiation levels.  It is not why I was visiting Japan in autumn 2013 (See also Nov 18, 2013, “A Visit to Fukushima, Cut Short. With PHOTOS and Reflections“), but it is what started this scientific side-project.

I’ve been concerned that the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear disaster is affecting not only sea life in and near Japan, but also thousands of miles from Japan, and that food in North America may end up containing increasing amounts of man-made radioactive materials.  The cause for this concern, apart from the ongoing disaster in Fukushima on the shore of the Western Pacific, is the impression that government agencies on the Eastern side of the Northern Pacific Ocean (US, Canada, Mexico) are strangely unresponsive to this widespread concern.

Last spring (2013) when I lived near Arcata, in Northern coastal California, I sent 4 samples to a lab (1 mushrooms, 2 soils, 1 seaweeds – See Northern Humboldt Samples: Lab Results (June 5, 2013)).   The lab results did not particularly raise my concerns (in fact they were somewhat of a relief, too); they just confirmed the need for more testing, especially as to identify where the (very likely) relative hotspots are in North America.  My seaweed sample then, unlike mushrooms and soils, contained only naturally occurring isotopes, not even a trace of Cesium-137 or Iodine-131.  I had not previously observed my Geiger Counter respond to food the way it did to those seaweeds in Japan.

Since then, elevated levels of radiation have been observed in California (in rain (See EnviroReporter Nov 27, 2013), and on beach near San Francisco (See ENEnews Jan 4., 2014), yet (this is true regardless of what the cause(s) of these events end up being revealed to be) officials keep making statements about there being ‘no health hazard’, all being ‘below levels of concern’, etc, usually – and this is the problem: – BEFORE having up-to-date location-specific sample radioisotope-analysis data.  Geiger Counters only show elevated levels, they don’t tell you the precise causes; that takes laboratory tests of samples.   Expecting to blow the lid of a potential cover-up, I  decided to go forward with having samples analyzed.

So, I present a small data puzzle piece here, which may shed a little bit of extra light on the radioactive contamination situation of the Pacific Ocean.   My data is not simulated, anecdotal or speculative, but comes from precise scientific lab tests.  It’s surprisingly good news, especially for seaweed lovers like myself.  The data on man-made radioactivity in my sampled food items is in:

The samples were analyzed for any traces of manmade fission materials, such as Iodine-131, Cesium-134, Cesium-137, Cobalt-60, and many others.  Further below, many more details are provided in copies of original reporting, but for the purpose of giving a quick impression of the results in SI units, see this first table with data, below.

For a quick impression, the basics of the lab results are summerized in this overview table.  There isn’t much to see, as the samples’ elevated radioactivity was apparently not from Fukushima, but nearly all from high Potassium content (and thus Potassium-40 – Updated: K40 data now included!):

Figure: Overview of selected sample lab analysis results. Potassium’s Potassium-40 is very clearly what caused the high Geiger Counter measurements.
© Michaël Van Broekhoven, 2014

• Many more isotopes were tested for than shown in this overview table, see under ‘Full Disclosure Lab Results’, below.
• Lab note:  Insufficient sample volumes [less than 150 g] were submitted for Samples 2, 3, 4, 8, and 9.  The results for these samples should be considered qualitative and not quantitative, in other words, Cobalt-60 and Cesium-137 were ‘detected’, but their precise amounts have a larger than standard margin of error, so they cannot be used for scientific calculations that would require quantitative precision.

Summary of findings (more further below):

The significantly elevated radioactivity of these samples, as I measured them with my Medcom Inspector Alert Geiger Counter, are clearly NOT due to radioactive contamination from Fukushima, but rather from naturally occurring radioisotopes, mostly due to impressive Potassium-40 content.  Amazingly, these Japanese seaweeds are simply exceptionally nutritious, NOT contaminated.  

I was very concerned that I would be writing something very different, along the lines of, “My inquiry has revealed that the nuclear industry, near-certainly as a direct result of TEPCO’s [Stock market ticker: 9501:JP] still-leaking Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear disaster, has ruined at least part of the previously famously pristine coastal kelp forests of Hokkaido in far-Northern Japan,” (in fact, that is one of the lines of what I had ready in draft before I received the data…), but wow-was-I-wrong my lab results in fact revealed that the elevated radioactivity found in those kelps is in most cases entirely the result of naturally occurring radioisotopes, particularly Potassium-40.  

Although I began considering this possibility recently (see my Jan. 9, 2014 blogpost, “Could (natural, normal) radioactive Potassium-40 (K-40) be the main cause of elevated radiation levels in food?“), this is NOT what I expected to find:

• 2/3rds of my suspected-to-be-significantly-contaminated samples contained no nuclear pollution at all.  None.   (Scientifically: the detected levels, if there were any, were below quantifiable levels).
• The levels of artificial radionuclides in the other 1/3rd are extremely low, amounting to no more than unquantifiable ‘trace levels detected’.
• !-> Eating these samples would actually have been harmless;
• !!!–>  Geiger Counters, like the Medcom Inspector Alert I used, are so incredibly sensitive to naturally occurring radioisotopes, that any conclusion based on them, both that they might show something ‘alarming‘ or that what they show is ‘of no concern‘, without being backed up with sample-specific lab data, is premature unscientific guess work.
• One seaweed sample does show evidence of  clearly measurable nuclear contamination (detection of Co-60 in kelp harvested over 500 km from Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power Disaster site).
• !!!–> Naturally occurring radiation can be surprisingly high. Incredibly high Gross Beta is likely entirely, or almost entirely, due to Potassium-40.  Added:  Several days after this blogpoast first appeared, the lab ran the samples again to determine the K40 levels.  They are now included in the tables.  It was indeed K40, which for sample #1 reached a whopping 5,094.9 Bq/kg (!!!).  
• What precisely caused the elevated Gross Alpha Count in Sample #1 remains a mystery.   More research might shed light on this.  (See more in Conclusions & Reflections section).

Although this is a very small quantity of samples, nevertheless, based on these lab results, which powerfully undermined the grounds for my own concerns for current long-distance nuclear contamination (voiced HERE, here, here, here, here, here and in the previous blogpost), my own newly-adjusted personal conclusion  is that at least HOKKAIDO SEAWEEDS are essentially SAFE TO EAT (mid-January 2014, subject to change based on other new information).

This independent investigation was conducted by © Michaël Van Broekhoven, and made public through his personal blog,  http://allegedlyapparent.wordpress.com/.

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Fukushima: US-Israeli Stuxnet Sabotages Thermometers and Water Treatment

4KEY.NET

With every new report and article coming from the establishment and alternative media about Fukushima, Japan, the gap between their fake reality and the real truth keeps growing further and has by now become so wide that it seems to be very unlikely that the establishment and alternative media will ever pick up the real facts in their reporting about the nuclear power station in Fukushima.

Ever since the 7.0 earthquake hit Japan on March 11, 2011, the cover-up of the actual causes – the eco-terror, the nuclear attacks and the sabotage – has been tightly scripted and expanded by the media, the USGS, the NRC, the Israeli Magna BSP [1, 2], the United Nations, the EU and even the WWF and Greenpeace.

Obviously it can be expected that also the problems in the aftermath of the proven eco-terror, the nuclear attacks and the sabotage will be shrouded in lies and deception. Sadly, we don’t expect any other behavior.

Practically all the ongoing reports about the leaking of water, about pumps and valves that are malfunctioning or were “forgotten” to be switched properly and about the failing thermometers at the Fukushima power station are missing the same crucial piece of information.

It has already been confirmed since at least 2010 and in multiple ways that Stuxnet (malware/virus), created by the U.S. and Israel, infected and continues to sabotage the Fukushima nuclear power station by attacking the Siemens SCADA control systems.

The same Stuxnet is also responsible for sabotaging the thermometers in the nuclear reactors that continue to fail, like it is the case in unit 2, falsely blamed on workers who “cripple” the instruments. Thermometers like in Fukushima are operated through/linked to the SCADA control systems which are still infected with Stuxnet, this means that also the thermometers are exposed to the Stuxnet infection.

The decontamination system for contaminated water at Fukushima was co-developed by AREVA and Veolia Water in “a record-two months“ after the eco-terror and the nuclear attacks occurred. According to Veolia Water data their “state-of-the-art online control of wastewater systems” work with and supplement SCADA control systems:

• “The operation and reporting of STAR Control® are based on Internet technology and a graphic user interface is accessed by network browser on LAN, ADSL or similar networks.”

This is surely the reason why Magna BSP’s internet connection with the reactors at Fukushima is so important to those who have created this mess by committing eco-terror and engaging in war crimes. In this way full control can be kept remotely which is necessary when Japan is to be held hostage firmly, as they slowly lose credibility in the international community for a disaster they didn’t even create.

So whenever you encounter a new Fukushima article or report be sure to check if that source has already reported about the real facts, including the eco-terror, the nuclear attacks and the sabotage. If they haven’t done so then it’s very unlikely that their future reporting will be trustworthy since they omit key facts on purpose and leave you in fear with fake radiation charts to stare at.