Dietary exposure levels to 134Cs, 137Cs, 90Sr, and 239+240Pu in Japan after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident: a duplicate portion study for fiscal years 2012–2014

TL;DR

This study measured radionuclide exposure in Japanese diets after the Fukushima nuclear accident and found levels well below safety limits.

Contribution

The study is the first to examine dietary exposure to 90Sr and Pu isotopes in adults and children post-Fukushima.

Findings

The highest combined cesium activity concentration was 11 Bq/kg, much lower than the 100 Bq/kg regulatory limit.

Committed effective doses were 74 µSv annually, significantly below the 1 mSv/y permissible level.

Plutonium was undetected, and strontium levels were similar to pre-accident levels.

Abstract

Since the accident at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP), concerns have arisen in Japan regarding the presence of radionuclides in food. Moreover, exposure levels to 90Sr and Pu isotopes in adults and those to 134Cs+137Cs, 90Sr, and Pu (where Cs, Sr, and Pu are cesium, strontium, and plutonium, respectively) in children have not been examined. Therefore, this study employed a duplicate portion approach to examine dietary exposure levels of radionuclides in adults and children following the FDNPP accident.

The study spanned fiscal years 2012–2014 and was conducted in 10 prefectures: Hokkaido, Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima, Ibaraki, Saitama, Tokyo, Kanagawa, Osaka, and Kochi. The participants provided portions of their meals for two non-consecutive days and completed questionnaires on the meal items. The activity concentrations of 134Cs, 137Cs, 90Sr, and 239+240Pu, which are targets of standard limits for radionuclides in foods in Japan, were determined according to the Radioactivity Measurement Series. The daily intake was calculated based on the radionuclide activity concentrations in the duplicate portion samples, and the committed effective doses were estimated using dose coefficients for the ingestion of each radionuclide provided by the International Commission on Radiological Protection.

Approximately 80 duplicate samples were obtained in each fiscal year, and 242 samples were collected. The highest summed activity concentration of 134Cs and 137Cs was 11 Bq/kg, which was recorded in Date City (child) in 2013; this level was approximately one-ninth of the standard limit for general foods (100 Bq/kg). The committed effective dose from annual ingestion of the sample described above was 74 µSv, approximately 14 times lower than the maximum permissible level of 1 mSv/y. Pu was not detected and the 90Sr activity concentrations were similar to those before the FDNPP accident.

For the samples examined in the present study, the 134Cs, 137Cs, 90Sr, and 239+240Pu dietary exposure levels were considerably lower than the regulatory levels and may not pose a health risk.

The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1265/ehpm.25-00072.

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