Californians Need Not Be Alarmed by Japanese Emitted Radiation

According to federal and state officials, the diminutive traces of radiation from Japan’s damaged nuclear plant that reached the west coast pose no health risk.

The doses of radiation a person normally receives from bricks, rocks, (yes rocks and bricks emit radiation) and the sun are 100,000 times the dose rates detected at a California and Washington monitoring stations.

Worries that Japan’s nuclear disaster was creating an international crisis grew as a radioactive plume, released from the Fukushima Dai-ichi, reached Southern California last Friday. The radiation, though, mostly dissipated by the time it reached the U.S. coastline.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, miniscule amounts of the radioactive isotopes iodine-131, iodine-132, tellurium-132 and cesium-137 had made their way to a Sacramento monitoring station tied to the U.N.’s Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, however, the readings were far below levels that pose legitimate health risks.

A detector at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington State earlier this week also detected trace amounts of xenon-133 – a gas produced during nuclear fission – the DOE said.

In a joint statement, the Department Of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said the doses of radiation people generally get from the surrounding environment are 100,000 times greater than those detected at the two monitoring sites.

Read more at Natural Buy