Assessment of the effectiveness of the post-Fukushima food monitoring campaign in the first year after the nuclear accident: A hypothesis
Creators: name: Steinhauser, Georg
Publisher: name: London : Elsevier Ltd
Year: 2016
Subjects: subject: Cattle
subject: Food monitoring
subject: Food safety
subject: Fukushima nuclear accident
subject: Internal exposure
subject: Radioactive fallout
subject: Radiocesium
subject: Regulatory limit
subject: Accidents
subject: Beef
subject: Cesium
subject: Commerce
subject: Efficiency
subject: Fallout
subject: Meats
subject: Nuclear reactor accidents
subject: Fukushima nuclear accidents
subject: Monitoring
subject: cesium 134
subject: cesium 137
subject: cesium
subject: cattle
subject: efficiency measurement
subject: fallout
subject: food consumption
subject: food market
subject: food safety
subject: monitoring system
subject: nuclear accident
subject: radionuclide
subject: regulatory approach
subject: Article
subject: beef
subject: berry
subject: chicken meat
subject: dairy product
subject: egg
subject: food monitoring
subject: grain
subject: monitoring
subject: mushroom
subject: sea food
subject: seaweed
subject: tea
subject: vegetarian
subject: wild boar
subject: analysis
subject: animal
subject: bovine
subject: human
subject: Japan
subject: meat
subject: procedures
subject: radiation monitoring
subject: radioactive contamination
subject: Fukushima [Tohoku]
subject: Honshu
subject: Tohoku
subject: Bos
subject: Animals
subject: Cesium Radioisotopes
subject: Food Contamination, Radioactive
subject: Fukushima Nuclear Accident
subject: Humans
subject: Meat
subject: Radiation Monitoring
subject: Dewey Decimal Classification::600 | Technik::620 | Ingenieurwissenschaften und Maschinenbau::624 | Ingenieurbau und Umwelttechnik
subject: Dewey Decimal Classification::500 | Naturwissenschaften::530 | Physik

description: The purpose of this study was to assess whether or not the food monitoring campaign after the Fukushima nuclear accident has been successful in reducing the number of above-limit-food from reaching the consumers. The hypothesis of this study is that the fraction of "post-market" food can be used for this purpose, when the post-market fraction in the above-limit (p') items is compared to the post-market fraction in the entity of food items (p) that have been screened for radionuclides (134Cs and 137Cs). Indeed the post-market fraction in most vegetarian produce decreased significantly in the above-limit food items (p'/p &lt; 1), indicating a high efficiency of the monitoring campaign. For tea, however, the analysis reveals a low efficiency of the campaign (p'/p ≈ 1). For beef, the fraction of post-market-foods within the above-limit samples was much higher than the respective fraction in the entity of measured samples (p'/p &gt; 1), indicating a much lower effectiveness of the monitoring action for beef. The author speculates that, by following the governmental monitoring manual (which gives "meat" only second priority), the sudden exceedances caught the monitoring agencies unprepared and triggered a much higher density monitoring of beef with the delay of several weeks. Even then, many above limit items reached the market (mainly because the monitoring during this period had focused on the post-market). Therefore, it is likely that some above-limit beef has been consumed by the public. For other meat products, the fraction of post-market samples was very low, which does not allow for the validation of the effectiveness of the monitoring campaign. Overall, the monitoring seemed to have been more effective for vegetarian produce than for meat. © 2015 The Author.