High total doses, such as 400 to 600 rads delivered over a short period of time, will kill or at least severely disable the animals for a long time. Temporary sterility, drops in milk and egg production, and retarded growth may result from high sub-lethal doses. The ingestion of radioactive materials by farm animals should not be a problem since radioactive material in milk, meat, and eggs would become a human health problem before the dose to farm animals would become significant. It may be possible to take animals off pasture to reduce their ingestion of radioactive material. Radiation levels which would easily kill humans and farm animals should have little or no effect on seed or on crops already in the field.
Many plants require a dose of thousands of rads to stop seed germination or growth.
A dose of 4,000 to 10,000 rads is needed to inhibit sprouting of potatoes or onions. The attached chart shows the doses needed to affect plant growth. Soil Soil would not be of immediate concern but proper management procedures could do a great deal to reduce a problem should it occur. The addition of lime to calcium-poor soils can reduce the uptake into plants of such radionuclides as strontium 90 and strontium 89. The greatest amount of contamination reaches vegetables by direct contamination.