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Comment by ggreer

5 years ago

Here's the actual paper described by the Vice article.[1]

For those who aren't familiar with the unit, a becquerel[2] is one nucleus decay per second. The highest level of Cesium radioactivity they measured was 19 becquerel per kilogram of honey. For comparison, natural potassium has around 31,000 Bq/kg.

To put it in more concrete terms: eating a kilogram of the most radioactive honey they found would be equivalent to eating two bananas.[3]

1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22081-8

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becquerel

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose

8 comments

ggreer

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pmiller2  5 years ago

I just ate 2 bananas a minute ago. You mean I could have eaten a kilo of honey instead? :P

Seriously, though. Everything is radioactive since the 1940s. This doesn't strike me as a huge surprise, although I guess it is good to do this sort of research, if only to get an idea what the levels are.

  • jfengel  5 years ago

    I think a lot of people would be surprised, that tests done far away, eight decades ago, should have measurable effects now. If nothing else, it's a very important reminder that resumption of those tests would put even more radioactivity into the atmosphere.

    There are other effects as well, like the fact that we've basically ruined carbon dating for new objects. They do dating with a basis of 1950 as "Before Present", half-jokingly calling it "Before Physics". After Physics, carbon dating is unreliable, and will be for many centuries to come.

    The health effects are negligible, but it's an opportunity to talk about an process that does have real effects that people aren't aware of. And that has an effect on future decisions: let's not risk making them non-negligible.

seba_dos1  5 years ago

As the article notes, a much more important thing to consider is how it influences insects working with pollen and producing that honey rather than how it influences humans who consume it.

  • cameron_b  5 years ago

    As an east coast beekeeper, that was certainly the part that interested me. I've looked into other heavy metal accumulation in honey, namely lead from firing range remediation. In several studies the bees didn't seem to be bothered by collecting lead-rich honey from contaminated plants, though I don't remember the duration over which they were monitored.

    One of the interesting things with lead is that there are plants more given to storing it in leaves and stalks than flower/nectar/pollen and you can effectively devise a bio-remediation strategy around a few plants, Sunflowers or mustard for instance, that pull up the lead, but don't pass much if any to the honey. The bees stimulate the growth and seed set of the plants, encouraging self-seeding. Nerd-level me would chop and dry the stalks and leaves and test for lead until it fell below the baseline in a few years. You get to fix the soil, while making a valuable product ( once you test the honey for lead as well )

    I wonder if similar could be done to pull up the Cesium with Potassium-hungry plants that don't move the Cesium to their flowers. But then how would you dispose of the silage?

legulere  5 years ago

From the Wikipedia article you reference:

> Criticism

> Several sources point out that the banana equivalent dose is a flawed concept because consuming a banana does not increase one's exposure to radioactive potassium.[11][12][1]

T> he committed dose in the human body due to bananas is not cumulative because the amount of potassium (and therefore of 40K) in the human body is fairly constant due to homeostasis,[13][14] so that any excess absorbed from food is quickly compensated by the elimination of an equal amount.