Are you eating California produce?

There was concern over the radiation levels in California. So, as someone who eats produce from CA, I wanted to know whether anyone here is eating or not eating produce. If you are, have you had any unusual reaction? If you have not, I'd like to hear that too.

I have not had any issues myself that I could pinpoint to anything related to this, but I wanted to ask anyway.

If this is an ignorant question for some reason or another, sorry.

45% of the worlds tomatoes comes from Cali. If you are in the US and you are eating pizza, ketchup, pasta sauce etc, then you are eating Cali produce.

reply to post by joe12


I don't eat those. I already said I'm eating produce from California, though. The label on the product tells me exactly the city it's grown in.

I'm just hear to ask for subjective reports from people, which is apart from any theories or feelings on the issue that anyone may have.

I live in Australia and in our house we eat mostly Australian produce, although some do come from Italy.
This whole situation is scary, man, imagine what the effects are going to be on unborn babies who's mothers are eating potentially radioactive food?

reply to post by daynight42


Hi, Daynight42, I live in Cali and I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary....yet.....lol

I am!

Yum to the Peach Pies

Yum to the Strawberry Pies

Yum to the Shnozberry Pies

Though, the last may be imported...

As for reactions, I tend to have a strong desire for second helpings.

I'm from California, I eat produce from here every single day.

But I tell you, I've definitely cut down on my milk and fish.

Honestly, not one person including myself has noticed any strangeness.

But radiation works in mysterious ways (spooky music).

Where I live they asked us to avoid eating tuna if possible, due to possible contamination.

I too, am from California. Nothing strange here, that I have noticed.

Like we could trust Californians on defining something strange!

reply to post by drsamuelfrancis


I'm in Australia too?! Should I be scared?

Oh no, are we doomed too??

reply to post by User8911


Must be all the "fresh oxygen" we get from the coast.

Or the taxes. Glad the oxygen isn't taxed.

Interesting how this is showing up in several places at once.

Look at CA, and ID. Guess what Idaho is famous for?

Gross state product for 2004 was US$43.6 billion. The per capita income for 2004 was US$26,881. Idaho is an important agricultural state, producing nearly one-third of the potatoes grown in the United States. All three varieties of wheat, Dark Northern Spring, Hard Red and Soft White are grown in the state. Nez Perce County is considered a premier Soft White growing locale.

Wiki

Unfortunately in the post I just quoted, I did not take CA into account, let's look there:

California remained the No. 1 state in cash farm receipts in 2009, with its $34.8 billion in revenue representing 12.3 percent of the U.S. total. The state accounted for 16.5 percent of national receipts for crops, and 6.5 percent of the U.S. revenue for livestock and livestock products.

California’s agricultural abundance includes more than 400 commodities. The state produces nearly half of U.S.-grown fruits, nuts and vegetables. Across the nation, U.S. consumers regularly purchase several crops produced solely in California.

In 2009, 81,500 farms operated in California, less than 4 percent of the national total. More than 23 percent of California farms produced commodity sales totaling $100,000, compared with 17 percent for the U.S. as a whole. During 2009, California lands devoted to farming and ranching totaled 25.4 million acres, unchanged from 2008. Both the California and U.S. average farm size remained steady from the previous year at 312 and 418 acres, respectively.

source

Nothing on specific crops, but with such a wide range, there's a very good chance you're going to be enjoying some of that Fukushima Daiichi special brand cesium(tm) along with your Idaho potatoes.

Yummy

Aside from the ball sack growing from my chin, I've been cool.

Originally posted by daynight42
There was concern over the radiation levels in California. So, as someone who eats produce from CA, I wanted to know whether anyone here is eating or not eating produce. If you are, have you had any unusual reaction? If you have not, I'd like to hear that too.

If this is an ignorant question for some reason or another, sorry.

Hey I'm ignorant about heart surgery and not ashamed to admit it. We're all ignorant about something. I was licensed to handle radioactive materials so that's one topic I'm not ignorant about.

You're asking a valid question about eating produce. I've been watching this site:

www.nuc.berkeley.edu...

In case you aren't sure how to interpret that, it shows elevated levels of radioactive iodine and Cesium in Early April. By the end of April, it looks like levels had dropped to background. that's in milk but since the cows are eating the crass the radiation fell on, that's probably how they got a lot of that radiation in the milk. So it may be an indicator of what might be getting into produce also, to some extent.

The one exception is the CS-137 which had a little spike in mid-May, but it's less than half the peak in April.

Regarding your question about symptoms, yes that question is a little ignorant, but nothing to be ashamed of. Only large doses of radiation tend to produce immediate symptoms.

The types of doses in US produce and Milk aren't high enough to produce any symptoms probably within the first year. I haven't tried to calculate the exact risk we face from eating CA produce but my back-of-the-napkin estimate would be it's not zero and probably about the same as the risk of being killed by lightning or something along those lines. Some people will probably die from it, but not too many, and it could be 2 years or 70 years from now that some kind of cancer develops from the exposure. You probably have a greater risk of dying from crossing the street, than from eating CA produce in May 2011 or later. If you ate some from April, that probably won't kill you either, but the risks might be a little higher than death from lightning. Basically the formula for risk is estimated to be a 1 in 4 million chance of death from each additional millirem you're exposed to. And we've all been exposed to different levels of millirems. Source: www.phyast.pitt.edu...

I've heard people saying they feel physical symtoms and think it's from the radiation. I can almost guarantee it's not (not from anyone in the US talking about exposure to Fukushima radiation). The symptoms they are feeling must be from something else, or are psychosomatic (in their head but can seem real).

Originally posted by badw0lf
I'm in Australia too?! Should I be scared?

Oh no, are we doomed too??

The people that might be "doomed" are most likely to be just outside the evacuation zone in Japan where it's still pretty "hot" but they aren't evacuating. And by "doomed" they aren't all gonna die, most will live, they are just more at risk than the rest of us.

Based on wind alone, atmospheric contamination is likely to have largely spared Australia even though it's closer to Japan than the US West coast. So produce in Australia is probably less contaminated.

I'm not as familiar with ocean currents however. If there are concerns in Australia , I suspect they would be more likely to involve Pacific Ocean life like fish, kelp, etc. I'm not saying it's unsafe, but I wouldn't assume there's no radiation at all either without some research or test results.

Originally posted by ThinkingCap
But I tell you, I've definitely cut down on my milk and fish.

I haven't cut back on milk, though I did put my milk in the freezer for a month before drinking it after the accident, so the radioactive iodine could dissipate. It only has a half-life of 8 days.

I have cut back on buying fish. Fortunately I already had a lot of fish in the freezer before the accident so I'm still eating that.

Originally posted by snowen20
Where I live they asked us to avoid eating tuna if possible, due to possible contamination.

Why just Tuna? But yeah, any fish from the pacific ocean right now is a question mark. We don't know how much radioactivity leaked into the Ocean. Fortunately the Pacific Ocean is huge.

Background radiation here from the geiger counter is around 12-15 uR/hr.

Rainwater is 25-35 uR/hr. Weird. Never seen rain above background. Anyone else notice rain water is higher than background now?

Thanks everyone for your replies. For anyone who missed it, here's a related thread:

Radiation found in U.S. Food

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I don't think you would notice anything.
That's the way this kind of radiation works - you just eat it, then maybe 2 years,,3 years.. 5 years later you get cancer.

After like, 15 years, they go back, look at the data, and they say, "Hmmm....thyroid and other cancers went up 40% after March 2011. Birth defects and still births went up 200%" or something like that.

That's how they get by with killing us. We're frogs in water that's being heated but we don't feel the heat.

Good to see this question, most people I find like to live in denial though so even if they do get symptoms they will remain oblivious. S@F

Yes to OP, but no unusual reaction yet.

I am in one of a few west coast cities that have detected Cesium in the US as well, but in regards to consuming it directy like that, the problem is it's not like a blanket effect as it's so spread out by the time it's here. It's a gamble. Few and far between hot particles by the time they reach us from the west, but they are reaching us, and they don't stop in CA.

So the odds of you consuming one in Produce or directly are there, but it's hard to say what those odds are, how many of those particules will land on you. If you run along the water in California frequently you will be at higher risk. If you go and eat the happy cows I can't see if there's a risk there or not but as Hadriana above said, only time (years) will tell... I think a lot of us have had a good idea of how this will all play out once we saw that first reactor blow back in March.

It would be nice if our higher Government, and positions such as the Surgeon General could go ahead and begin delivering on that whole Transparency and Open Government | The White (not very transparent) House by openly addressing this and start talking about what counter-measures are being used now to help reduce the risk of radiation consumption. It seems like something the leader of our country would do if he cared about the future of it, and it's children...

But hey otherwise the weather's been great out here...