Tag: radiation

Mutant wolves exposed to Chernobyl disaster have evolved a new superpower, scientists discover

Mutant wolves roaming the wasteland of Chernobyl have developed a new superpower that could have life-saving implications for humans. 

A team of researchers found the animals in the Chernobyl Evacuation Zone (CEZ) have genetically altered immune systems that show a resilience to cancer.

These findings gave researchers hope that the results can be used to find cures for human cancer patients.

Since the powerplant explosion in 1986, humans were evacuated from Chernobyl and the surrounding areas to avoid the extreme levels of radiation. 

The absence of humans allowed wildlife to flourish and thrive in the CEZ, which contains 11.28 millirem of radiation – six times the allowed exposure amount for human workers.

Grizzly bears and bison stroll among the trees, lynx and fox slink through the long grass. 

Beavers, boar, elk, deer, raccoons and more than 200 species of bird call the area home. 

In 2014, Cara Love, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton University, set out with a team of researchers to understand how animals have been able to survive the cancer-causing radiation.

Love and her team took blood samples from the wolves and placed GPS collars with radiation dosimeters on them to get real-time measurements of where they were and their radiation exposure levels.

‘We get real-time measurements of where they are and how much [radiation] they are exposed to,’ said Love.

The researchers examined the genetic differences between the DNA of mutated wolves in the 1,000-square-mile radius of the CEZ and those outside it.

The results showed that, despite receiving potentially deadly daily radiation doses, the wolves appeared remarkably resilient against its effects. 

Analysis showed that a number of their genes which are linked to cancer had new  mutations to them, suggesting they had evolved to protect against the radiation.

It is hoped that the discovery could pave the way for experts to identify mutations in humans that reduce the risk of cancer.

The new research was presented last month at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology’s Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington. 

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5.5 Tons Of Radioactive Water Leaks Out Of Damaged Fukushima Nuclear Plant

Japan’s damaged Fukushima nuclear plant has been discharging batches of treated radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean for six months. A new report, however, has brought to light a newly discovered leak that caused tons of contaminated water to seep into the ground. 

Local media Kyodo News reports that on Wednesday morning – at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear power plant – workers found water leaking from an exhaust port on the outer wall of a high-temperature incinerator building. 

According to the plant operator, TEPCO, the contaminated water treatment equipment connected to the exhaust vent inside the building was being cleaned, and water containing radioactive materials leaked out.

TEPCO estimates that 5.5 tons of water, with over 22 billion becquerels of radioactive material, leaked into the soil outside the building. 

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No More Research on Cellphone Radiation and Human Health, Government Says

The National Toxicology Program (NTP) has no plans to further study the effects of cellphone radiofrequency radiation (RFR) on human health — even though the program’s own $30 million study that took about 10 years to complete in 2018 reported evidence of cancer and DNA damage.

The NTP said in an updated January 2024 fact sheet that it was abandoning further investigation because “the research was technically challenging and more resource-intensive than expected.”

For decades, the NTP has been the premier governmental testing program for pharmaceuticals, chemicals and radiation, according to Devra Davis, Ph.D., MPH, a toxicologist and epidemiologist who served on the board of scientific counselors for the NTP when it was launched in the 1980s.

Commenting on the news, Davis said, “It is the ultimate arrogance and folly to stop doing research on this major growing environmental pollutant, precisely when we have ample evidence of harm.”

Davis has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed publications in books and journals, ranging from The Lancet to the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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‘I’ve never seen anything like this’: Japan says reason behind 1,200 tonnes of fish washing ashore is unknown

Officials in Japan have admitted they are struggling to determine why hundreds of tonnes of fish have washed ashore in recent days.

Earlier this month, an estimated 1,200 tonnes of sardines and mackerel were found floating on the surface of the sea off the fishing port of Hakodate in Hokkaido, forming a silver blanket stretching for more than a kilometre.

On Wednesday, officials in Nakiri, a town on the Pacific coast hundreds of miles south of Hokkaido, were confronted with 30 to 40 tonnes of Japanese scaled sardines, or sappa, which had been observed in the area a couple of days earlier.

Local fishers scrambled to collect the fish, fearing their carcasses would lower the oxygen content of the water as they decompose and damage the marine environment.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” a fisher who has worked in the area for 25 years told the Mainichi Shimbun. “It was only around last year that we began to catch sappa in Nakiri. It makes me wonder if the marine ecosystem is changing.”

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Thousands of tons of dead fish wash ashore in Japan – three months after the nation released treated Fukushima radioactive water into the sea

Thousands of tons of dead fish have washed up on a beach in northern Japan, prompting speculation that the release of treated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant has wrought havoc on local ecosystems. 

The sardines and some mackerel washed ashore in Hakodate on Japan’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido on Thursday morning, creating an unsettling sliver blanket that covered almost a mile of shoreline. 

Officials could not come up with an explanation for the phenomenon, but Takashi Fujioka, a Hakodate Fisheries Research Institute researcher, posited a number of theories as to why the fish could have died en-masse.

He said they may have become exhausted due to a lack of oxygen while moving in a densely packed school in shallow waters, or may have suddenly entered cold waters during their migration and succumbed to shock.

There have been several recorded cases of similar phenomena springing up on several parts of Japan’s coastline.

But this particular phenomenon occurred just three months after Japanese authorities began releasing treated radioactive water back into the sea – a move which angered its neighbours including China and South Korea.

China has since banned Japanese seafood and criticised the country as being ‘extremely selfish and irresponsible’, with the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship newspaper The Global Times writing it could open ‘Pandora’s box’ and trigger fears of a ‘real-life Godzilla’. 

South Korean protestors also attempted to enter the Japanese embassy in Seoul carrying banners which read ‘The sea is not Japan’s trash bin’.

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Apple Tells Support Staff To Remain Silent On iPhone Radiation Concern

Apple plans to issue an over-the-air update in the coming days for iPhone 12 users in France after regulators ordered a halt in sales over concerns the device emits too much radiation. 

“We will issue a software update for users in France to accommodate the protocol used by French regulators,” Apple told Reuters in a statement. 

The company continued, “We look forward to iPhone 12 continuing to be available in France.”

Earlier this week, French regulators ordered a ban on iPhone 12 sales after a Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) test – how much radio frequency is absorbed into a body from a device – exceeded European radiation exposure limits. 

Besides the iPhone 12’s radiation levels, another controversy is brewing as Bloomberg said Apple instructed employees to stay ‘mum’ when customers ask about the radiation issue: 

If customers inquire about the French government’s claim that the model exceeds standards for electromagnetic radiation, workers should say they don’t have anything to share, Apple employees have been told. Staff should also reject customers’ requests to return or exchange the phone unless it was purchased in the past two weeks — Apple’s normal return policy.

Customers asking if the phone is safe should be told that all Apple products go through rigorous testing to ensure that they’re safe, according to the guidance.

Apple dismissed the radiation claims, indicating “this is related to a specific testing protocol used by French regulators and not a safety concern” for customers. “The ANFR [French regulator] is preparing to quickly test this update,” Noel Barrot, France’s digital affairs minister, told Reuters. 

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France Demands Apple Take iPhone 12 Off Market Immediately as it Emits Too Much Radiation

French regulators ordered Apple to stop selling the iPhone 12, saying it emits electromagnetic radiation levels that are above European Union standards for exposure. The company disputed the findings and said the device complies with regulations.

The French government agency that manages wireless communications frequencies issued the order after the iPhone 12 recently failed one of two types of tests for electromagnetic waves capable of being absorbed by the body.

It’s unclear why the phone, which was released in late 2020, didn’t pass the agency’s latest round of tests and why it was only that particular model.

France’s digital minister said the iPhone 12’s radiation levels are still much lower than levels that scientific studies consider could harm users, and the agency itself acknowledges that its tests don’t reflect typical phone use.

The National Frequency Agency on Tuesday called on Apple to “implement all available means to rapidly fix this malfunction” for phones already in use and said it would monitor device updates. If they don’t work, “Apple will have to recall” phones that have already been sold, it said.

The agency recently tested 141 cellphones and found that when the iPhone 12 is held in a hand or carried in a pocket, its level of electromagnetic energy absorption is 5.74 watts per kilogram, higher than the EU standard of 4 watts per kilogram.

The phone passed a separate test of radiation levels for devices kept in a jacket or in a bag, the agency said.

Radiation limits are set “well below the level at which harm will occur,” and therefore a small increase above the threshold “is unlikely to be of any health consequence,” said Malcolm Sperrin, director of medical physics at the U.K.’s Royal Berkshire hospital group.

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Fukushima nuclear plant’s operator says the first round of wastewater release is complete

The operator of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant said Monday that it has safely completed the first release of treated radioactive water from the plant into the sea and will inspect and clean the facility before starting the second round in a few weeks.

The Fukushima Daiichi plant began discharging the treated and diluted wastewater into the Pacific Ocean on Aug. 24. The water has accumulated since the plant was damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011, and the start of its release is a milestone in the plant’s decommissioning.

The discharge, which is expected to continue for decades until the decommissioning is finished, has been strongly opposed by fishing groups and by neighboring countries. China has banned all imports of Japanese seafood in response, hurting producers and exporters and prompting the Japanese government to compile an emergency relief fund. Groups in South Korea have also fiercely protested, demanding Japan stop the release.

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Radioactive Fish Discovered Near Fukushima Renews Concerns Over Plans To Dump Nuclear Wastewater Into Ocean

Japanese plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) studied a black rockfish in May and found that it contained levels of radioactive cesium that were 180 times over Japan’s regulatory limit.

The radioactive fish was caught near drainage outlets at the TEPCO plant, where three nuclear reactors melted down amidst a tsunami in March 2011. Rainwater from areas near the reactors flows into the area where the fish was caught.

The alarming discovery reignited concerns over TEPCO’s plans to start releasing 1.3 million tons of treated wastewater from the former Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant by August.

A report from July 23 showed that the problem is still unaddressed, prompting questions about how dangerous the company’s plans are for the public.

Radioactive cesium health risks

Radioactive cesium has been detected in surface water and different kinds of food, such as breast milk and pasteurized milk. The amount of radioactive cesium in food and milk depends on several factors.

The most important factor is whether or not there has been a recent fallout from a nuclear explosion, like a weapons test or an accident at a nuclear power plant.

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Nuclear Weapons: Devastation Inside the US

Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer has focused new attention on the legacies of the Manhattan Project — the World War II program to develop nuclear weapons.

As the anniversaries of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945, approach, it’s a timely moment to look further at dilemmas wrought by the creation of the atomic bomb.

The Manhattan Project spawned a trinity of interconnected legacies. It initiated a global arms race that threatens the survival of humanity and the planet as we know it. It also led to widespread public health and environmental damage from nuclear weapons production and testing. And it generated a culture of governmental secrecy with troubling political consequences.

As a researcher examining communication in science, technology, energy and environmental contexts, I’ve studied these legacies of nuclear weapons production. From 2000 to 2005, I also served on a citizen advisory board that provides input to federal and state officials on a massive environmental cleanup program at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state that continues today.

Hanford is less well known than Los Alamos, New Mexico, where scientists designed the first atomic weapons, but it was also crucial to the Manhattan Project. There, an enormous, secret industrial facility produced the plutonium fuel for the Trinity test on July 16, 1945, and the bomb that incinerated Nagasaki a few weeks later.

(The Hiroshima bomb was fueled by uranium produced in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, at another of the principal Manhattan Project sites.)

Later, workers at Hanford made most of the plutonium used in the U.S. nuclear arsenal throughout the Cold War. In the process, Hanford became one of the most contaminated places on Earth (for more see video below). Total cleanup costs are projected to reach up to $640 billion, and the job won’t be completed for decades, if ever.

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