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In reply to the discussion: FDA warns public not to eat possibly radioactive shrimp sold at Walmart [View all]NNadir
(36,598 posts)All living things contain 40K without which they would die, since potassium is an essential element. The polonium in shrimp is a function of the fact that the oceans naturally contain about 4.5 billion tons of uranium, which is in secular equilibrium with polonium, a decay product.
This point was covered some years back, in the post Fukushima brouhaha, when the lives of tuna were being saved by human paranoia over the presence of another isotope of cesium, the more radioactive 134Cs in response to another paper written by the authors of this one: N.S. Fisher,K. Beaugelin-Seiller,T.G. Hinton,Z. Baumann,D.J. Madigan, & J. Garnier-Laplace, Evaluation of radiation doses and associated risk from the Fukushima nuclear accident to marine biota and human consumers of seafood, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 110 (26) 10670-10675.
The authors of the paper were appalled by the generally stupid media frenzy connected with their previous paper.
From the paper cited:
If you were born after 1945, every fish or other seafood based animal and/or seaweed in sushi you have ever eaten has contained 137Cs from the era of open atmosphere nuclear testing. You are nonetheless, even if you have eaten seafood products, still alive.
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