Re: "Irradiated boar tests unsettled Moravians"

[Franz Schoenhofer <schoenho@via.at>]

At 15:33 02.02.2000 -0600, you wrote:
>
>
>FYI
>posted at
>http://www.praguepost.cz/news020200d.html
>The Prague Post
>Wednesday, February 2, 2000
>Irradiated boar tests unsettled Moravians
>Experts say high radioactive cesium levels no threat to local population
>By Ivan Remias
>For chef Vladimir Plainer, mad cows are a faint memory. But irradiated boar?
>That hits closer to home.   "Once the story broke, game dishes sold much
>worse," moans the man behind the restaurant at the Hotel Diana in
>hunting-rich Velke Losiny, in north Moravia.   Although Plainer dropped boar
>from his menu a year ago, he's far from happy about the radioactivity rumors
>making the rounds. Tests conducted in December on residents of the city of
>Sumperk revealed 14 cases of heightened cesium. Cesium is a radioactive
>isotope usually associated with leakage from nuclear power plants. A massive
>cesium presence can be carcinogenic.   The tests, conducted on hunters and
--------------------------------------

The article fails to give any values of contamination of wild boar,
mushrooms or people, which would be very interesting for me, since I have
worked also on the contamination of game after the Chernobyl accident since
May 1986, one week after the accident together with the Institute for Wild
Animal Research. Nevertheless the story is realistic. After the Chernobyl
accident game showed especially in large forest areas not only high, but
very often extremely high contamination with I-131 (decayed very soon) and
Cs-137. "Extremely high" means several thousands of Bq per kg fresh weight.
In large forest areas in Austria and Bavaria the contamination of game is
declining very slowly, because Cs-137 is very efficiently recycled in this
ecosystem. The animals most highly contaminated are roe deer and - even
higher - wild boar. If I remember correctly, wild boar meat showed in
certain parts of Bavaria more than 10 000 Bq/kg fresh weight, in Austria
about 6 000. This is restricted to large forest areas, which received
precipitation during the passage of the highly contaminated aerosol clouds
from Chernobyl. In areas which were low contaminated like the vicinity of
Vienna, wild boar shows at the most a few Bq/kg. 

It is also true that mushrooms and food like berries from forests are still
contaminated much higher than milk, grain and all other foodstuff.
Radioecological research has been done extensively after the Chernobyl
accident and has in my opinion revealed how complicated the fate of
radioactive fallout in the environment is.

Why especially wild boar is so highly contaminated still cannot be said.
Some people are of the opinion that it is from soil ingestion, some believe
that their diet (also earthworms and similar animals) is responsible. We
have made extensive investigations, but it seems that neither explanation
is reasonable. 

Franz


Franz Schoenhofer
Habicherg. 31/7
A-1160 Vienna
Austria
Tel.: +43-1-495 53 08
Fax.: same number
mobile phone: +43-664-338 0 333
e-mail: schoenho@via.at

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