[ RadSafe ] Chernobyl haunts the Norwegian uplands

[Morten Sickel]

Sorry for responding late, but I just came across this when cleaning up
my mailbox.. 

-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl [mailto:radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl] On
Behalf Of Raymond A Hoover

> Most of those area were in the path of the cloud that originated from
Chernobyl.  For a while the Finns > were thinking of banning the eating
of caribou (raindeer??) due to the high levels of Cs-137 in the
> meat.

I cannot talk for what Finland did, but in Norway, to avoid a total ban
on eating of reindeer (caribou) the allowed limit for selling of caribou
meat was set to 6000 Bq / kg for 137-Cs. About 10 years ago, it was
lowered to 3000 Bq/kg. 

If we had kept the normal limit of 600 Bq/kg, it would have made a total
stop for the caribou herders in parts of Norway, since most people
except for the caribou herders eats a relatively limited amount of
reindeer meat, it was assessed that a total ban of selling caribou meat
from those areas would make a larger amount of problems, both in the
society and for the health of the Norwegian people than rising the limit
of allowed contamination in reindeer meat.

I can dig up and post to the list some references to some of the resent
research that has been done here on related topics if there are any
interest.

-- 
Morten Sickel
Working at the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority
although usually not on Cernobyl-related problems