A type of tuna hauled from Oregon and Washington registered high radiation levels as per latest study but its authors are confident that these tuna are still safe for consumption.
In fact, the radiation levels in the tuna have tripled since the 2011 mega quake that shook Japan, causing an alarming meltdown in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, hence, releasing a huge amount of radionuclides into the Pacific Ocean.
However, scientists at the Oregon State University assured the trace levels of radiation from the Thunnus alalunga or the Albacore tuna only registered a tad 0.1 percent, a long shot from the limit set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The amount is so minute that a person needs to eat over 700,000 pounds of tuna harboring the most radiation level to be at par with the total radiation level received annually from cosmic rays, air and ground, x-rays, among others.
"You can't say there is absolutely zero risk because any radiation is assumed to carry at least some small risk but these trace levels are too small to be a realistic concern," said Delvan Neville of the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics at Oregon State University.
In the study, which was published in the bi-weekly journal Environmental Science and Technology, a total of 26 Pacific albacore were fished out of the Pacific Northwest U.S. coast from 2008 to 2012 to seek disparities between tunas from the pre-Fukushima and post-Fukushima incident.
The scientists were particularly looking for radiocesium, a radioactive isotope found in nuclear reactors and power plant wastes. Using samples from the tuna's loins, carcass, blood and guts, they found out that echelons of radiation did increase at varying levels. The study was the first to examine parts of a fish other than its blood.
Higher levels of radionuclide were found in four-year-old albacore, suggesting that they may have traveled undergone trans-Pacific migration more than once. The three-year-old albacores, meanwhile, are calculated to have only migrated once and majority of them obtained no single trace of radiation from Fukushima.
Moreover, the five-year-old albacores have stopped migrating and instead moved down south in the subtropical waters of the Central and West Pacific, the study found.
Neville, who is also the lead author of the study, remarked that their findings may also serve as a springboard in outlining albacore's migration.
"The presence of these radioactive isotopes is actually helping us in an odd way - giving us information that will allow us to estimate how albacore tuna migrate between our West Coast and Japan," Neville said.
