Tuna Have Increased Radiation after Fukushima Disaster

While albacore tuna caught off the Oregon coastline have increased levels of radiation, a new study says they can still be eaten safely.

To see how the fish had been affected by the 2011 disaster, scientists looked at pre-Fukushima and post-Fukushima levels of radioactivity in 26 Pacific albacore tuna, the Daily Mail reported via an Oregon State University press release.

At the highest level found, the amount of radioactivity had tripled in some fish, but this figure still only accounted for 0.1 percent of the radiocesium level set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for safety. 

The study, which will soon be published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, examined the amount of radionuclide in fish of different ages. The researchers discovered that 4-year-old albacore had higher levels than fish a year younger, suggesting that the older fish had likely made two trips across the area affected by the Fukushima disaster.

Most of the 3-year-old tuna didn't bear effects of Fukushima, and none of the fish had dangerous levels of radiation, according to the study.

"You can't say there is absolutely zero risk because any radiation is assumed to carry at least some small risk," Delvan Neville, a graduate research assistant in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics at Oregon State University and lead author on the study, said in the press release. "But these trace levels are too small to be a realistic concern.

"A year of eating albacore with these cesium traces is about the same dose of radiation as you get from spending 23 seconds in a stuffy basement from radon gas, or sleeping next to your spouse for 40 nights from the natural potassium-40 in their body," he added. "It's just not much at all."

Even though the albacore are a valuable U.S. food source, researchers don't know much about the migration patterns of the young fish prior to their entry into American fisheries.

"The presence of these radioactive isotopes is actually helping us in an odd way--giving us information that will allow us to estimate how albacore tuna migrate between our West Coast and Japan," Neville said in the press release.