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Sunday, April 3, 2011

Is anyone testing radioiodine exposed west coast dairy cows for thyroid damage? They should be!

There have been reports of radioactive iodine being found in small amounts in the milk of west coast dairy cows; the small amounts have been reported as a good sign. If the radioiodine found was actually Iodine 123, (as I suspected rained on Saint Louis 3/29/11) it could be a very bad sign. I123 has a very short half life of 13 hours. By the time the milk test results would have come back, most of the Iodine 123 would have decayed.

Instead of only reporting the results of the milk tests, public health officials should be testing and reporting bovine thyroid iodine concentrations.
They should be checking the cows that have tested positive, for thyroid function They should be checking the milk for decay particles like tellurium 123 that would help identify the type and initial exposure to radioiodines like I123.

Considering that these exposed milk cows are most likely grain fed, much like humans, their exposure to radioactive iodine would have been through inhalation and skin absorption. If some public health agency is not testing these cows for thyroid damage and function, they are either dangerously flat on their asses or there is something they don't want to find.





7 comments:

  1. I have a question.....I would like to buy dry milk from Red Mills Farm in Oregon. Do you know the time line for processing/packaging dry milk? I'm trying to figure out of dry milk sold on Amazon from Red Mills would be from cows milk after the radioactive fallout? Red Mills is ogranic but that doesn't mean anything with this radioactive rain. Any help would be appreciated.

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  2. Christine,

    thanks for the good question; I am going to reply here and make it into a blog post.

    Red Mills would be the best source of info.

    We purchased Organic Valley Nonfat Dry Milk from Amazon last week (it was sold and delivered by Amazon) It was marked with the following code
    10351BEXP1111. That means- made in 2010 on the 351'st day (Dec 26 2010) and best buy November 2011.

    Amazon is out of its own stock and now selling on the behalf of someone else. My guess is that the supply line is roughly 2 months. If you purchased right now you might get stuff made in Jan or late Feb.

    Your best bet would be a local grocery store that does not due a big business in dried milk.
    We picked up from the local grocery store some Flavorite Instant Nonfat dried milk with an expiration date of Feb 28 2013.

    Here is the other thing to consider is that even with the best case scenarios the fallout is going to be going on for at minimum MONTHS, if you want dried milk buy it now while the contamination risks are at their lowest.

    Things will get worse as monsoon season kick up, and there is still of a risk of an 8.0 aftershock and ten 7.0 aftershocks (Bath's law and Japanese history). More damage to the site is not out of question, so buying dried milk is not a crazy idea.

    But what ever you do make sure the dried milk is USA produced, the FDA has released an import alert on Chinese made dried milk, see
    http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cms_ia/importalert_401.html

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  3. Ms.X ~ Great answer, thank you. I also ordered the Organic Valley on Amazon yesterday along with the Red Mills Organic. I'm going to visit Whole Foods later today and see what they have on their shelf.

    10351BEXP1111 - thank you for this explanation. I always see EXP dates but often it's difficult to find the packaged date.

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  4. If our milk is showing Iodine 123 then would it be responsible to say that our eggs will be also?

    I'm feeling so much angst over not knowing what to feed my young children. My son is three and doesn't and will not eat meat so his main source of protein has been eggs.

    It's such a shame that I have to feed them canned/frozen veg/fruit which is not fresh and has much less nutritional value.

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  5. Iodine 123 decays quickly, so the milk and eggs wont be showing it long, the bigger risk would be to the cow and chicken that ingested it. But do remember the I123 is just a SWAG, Scientific Wild Assed Guess based on the short half life of what ever is coming down here in Missouri.
    We are keeping the iodine levels of children up by eating foods high in iodine. A paleo diet is probably the most helpful thing.

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  6. I just switched from synthetic to natural thyroid supplements . It is much better than what i was taking for the past year.

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  7. Post Fukushima, I would stay far away from any thyroid supplement derived from cow sources.

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