Fallout has reached USA westcoast - Radioactive Iodine 131 detected in US milk in Washington (WA)

I've come across an interesting article today about the radioactive legacy in Germany, especially in mushrooms and boars.

BERLIN – For a look at just how long radioactivity can hang around, consider Germany's wild boars. A quarter century after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union carried a cloud of radiation across Europe, these animals are radioactive enough that people are urged not to eat them.

And the mushrooms the pigs dine on aren't fit for consumption either. Germany's experience shows what could await Japan — if the problems at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant get any worse.

The German boars roam in forests nearly 950 miles (1,500 kilometers ) from Chernobyl. Yet, the amount of radioactive cesium-137 within their tissue often registers dozens of times beyond the recommended limit for consumption and thousands of times above normal.

SOURCE

It's particularly interesting because it mentions both, distance to "ground zero" and levels of radioactive Cesium isotope 137 as well as the elapsed time since the incident. This way you have a realistic correlation between the three values. The main factor is of course how much particles are released by the reactor meltdown in the first place. Getting a realistic value for that is unfortunately very difficult.

I have to say that I am impressed, if not shocked, by the levels mentioned in the article. I mean I know .. it's "Yahoo news" but I doubt they simply made up the numbers, since this issue is quite well studied. I would never have thought they are *that* high.