this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
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Has anyone an idea where this contamination comes from? With a half-life of Cs-137 of 30 years, the pretty mild dosage and no knowledge of how long those shrimp were on ice, there are a lot of possible sources without info about the amount of Barium contained or am i wrong?
The shorter the half-life, the more radiation the element is emitting. 30 years is quite short.
I know that, but there are a few things that might have caused this. Mushrooms and boar meat in some areas in Germany are still radioactive from chernobyl
I can't find anything, but Cs-137 is used in food irradiation, so that's a possibility.
For those wondering or panicking because they never heard of this, food irradiation is normal and common and a good thing, it's not typically ionizing radiation that turns something radioactive, it's more like how microwaves work but the non-heating kind. This was some kind of really rare fuckup.
Microwaves is a bad analogy because so many people equate radio wave "radiation" with nuclear radiation. Even though radio energy is just non-ionizing energy. Microwave ovens, in fact, just blast 2.4GHz (think WiFi) at water molecules, which then vibrate and heat up. Why 2.4? Because it was an ISM band not used for anything in particular. It could run at other frequencies too and the same effect would occur.
Food irradiation is just a step in the food processing process, like washing the food in water. That way, even if you do find a bug on your lettuce, any bad bacteria or parasite that were on the bug are dead.
I am betting more people know how microwaves work in broad strokes than the kinds of radiation used to sterilize food. I know in the early days of microwave ovens there were a LOT of people who had no idea how it worked and thought if you opened the door too soon deadly radiation would leak out like the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark and melt everyone's faces. Most kids who grew up in those times understood our parent's concerns were overblown as we all tried microwaving various things for fun.
I think despite the other things our modern society is stupid about, most people get that microwaves are radio waves, because of the prevalence of microwave towers and personal satellite dishes that use microwaves. Meanwhile, barely anyone has any idea what goes on between the carrot fields and walmart grocery bins.