Radiation Testing of all harvested vegetables

For the last three years, samples of the harvested Sea Vegetables have been submitted to U.C. Berkeley’s Department of Nuclear Engineering.

We are pleased to report that for the 2013 harvest, “no radioactive isotopes that can be attributed to Fukushima were detected.” http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/UCBAirSampling

Seaweed is harvested during the spring. Typically, a spring harvest is sold well into the following year, so seaweed harvested during the spring of 2013 will be sold throughout 2014.

The seaweed samples are part of a larger food chain study for which the Department was awarded a Presidential Citation from the American Nuclear Society. http://www.prweb.com/releases/prwebAmerican-Nuclear-Society/UC-Berkeley-Nuclear-Eng/prweb9613442.htm

Rising Tide can’t speak for the future and we certainly won’t speak to the credibility of many recent news stories, however, we can continue to have a world-leader in radiation testing analyze our seaweed and we will share the results with our seaweed family.

Test Results

“Below [are] the limits…derived for the different isotopes that could have come from Fukushima — at this point, only the longer-lived isotopes Cesium-134 and Cesium-137. The units are in becquerels per kilogram (Bq/kg) — one becquerel is one nuclear decay per second. The limits mean that if there were radioactivity above those limits, we would have seen it with our detectors. These limits should be compared to the level of the naturally occurring isotope potassium-40 (K-40), also given below, which for dried seaweed typically has an activity of hundreds of becquerels per kilogram.

UCB Sample ID: Seaweed11
Collection Date: 2013/04/28
Mass Tested: 320 grams

0.20 Bq/kg
Cs-137 < 0.20 Bq/kg
K-40 (natural): 1050 ± 100 Bq/kg

UCB Sample ID: Seaweed12 Collection Date: 2013/06/11 Mass Tested: 230 grams

Cs-134 < 0.085 Bq/kg
Cs-137 < 0.14 Bq/kg
K-40 (natural): 360 ± 36 Bq/kg

UCB Sample ID: Seaweed13 Collection Date: 2013/10/10 Mass Tested: 340 grams

Cs-134 < 0.068 Bq/kg
Cs-137 < 0.11 Bq/kg
K-40 (natural): 870 ± 90 Bq/kg

UCB Sample ID: Seaweed14 Collection Date: 2013/07/22 Mass Tested: 310 grams

Cs-134 < 0.12 Bq/kg
Cs-137 < 0.13 Bq/kg
K-40 (natural): 810 ± 80 Bq/kg