Scientists one step closer to cracking the case of these atomic swine
You may be surprised to know that Germany's wild boars are too radioactive to eat – and Chernobyl may not be solely to blame. Fallout from nuclear weapons testing decades ago during the Cold War is a significant contributor to that radiation, it turns out.
They analyzed 48 wild boar meat samples to potentially pinpoint the source of the contamination. In 88 percent of the samples, the level of radiation from cesium-137 exceeded Germany's food safety limits of 600 Bq/kg. It's believed this radiocesium got into the boars' diet via truffles, which they root out from underground. The cesium-137 sinks down, is absorbed by the fungus, and then gobbled up by the pigs.
The radioactive cesium likely came from two possible sources: the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster, and nuclear weapons testing during that century.
Since cesium-135 has a longer half-life than cesium-137 – also a product of uranium and plutonium fission – a higher ratio indicates that the source of radioactivity is more likely to come from nuclear weapons than nuclear reactors. It seems to us that the scientists are arguing that the cesium-135-to-cesium-137 ratio is high, and the level of cesium-137 is already known to be high, so that points to nuclear weapons tests as a significant source of the contamination.
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