Thursday, August 23, 2012
USA Radioactive Ground Beef Test Results 2012, 2011, 2010
Thank you for your donations to our professional food testing effort. We received $1016 in pre-tax donations and spent approximately $1900 for professional Gamma Spectrometry, Strontium, and Plutonium testing on 100% grass fed and grass finished Missouri ground beef.
Based on the results we found clear evidence of Cesium-137 contaminating US ground beef; we also found indications of a recent fuel rod fire showing up as Barium 140. On the positive news side, the 2012 drought has reduced contamination, and the geography combined with the soil composition of our particular farmer's land seems to have removed the bio-available Cesium from the grass at a rate faster than the ongoing fallout deposition. However, there are also some indications that Cobalt-60 has become bio-available since the onset of Fukushima.
Please watch the complete video for more detail and information on the tests and what other factors may mitigate exposure to the long term build up of Fukushima fallout.
As a show of appreciation for those people who previously donated to our food testing effort, we will be making available the raw lab data (minus personal and lab identifying information). If you previously donated and would like a copy of the lab data for your own personal use please email at the address in your PayPal receipt.
If you would like step-up and to donate to support our testing efforts and future tests we have planned, please use the DONATE button below.
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This is good information. I'll make a donation to support it.
ReplyDeleteOne quibble, though: I don't think your explanation for the decrease in the height of the K40 peak makes sense. You're correct that Cs can displace K. However, there's no preference for radiocesium to displace radioactive rather than stable potassium.
Therefore, most of the potassium displaced by radiocesium would be the isotopically stable K-39 and K-41. These do not contribute to the K-40 signal produced by gamma spectrometry. A huge cesium burden would be required to cause a noticeable shift in the K40 signal by chemical substitution. I don't think the data supports this.
Isn't it more likely that there are simply annual or season variations in overall potassium level in ground beef?
This is just a quibble. I agree with the overall conclusions and applaud the valuable information you've been sharing.
Aaron Datesman
That's why the chart was identified as a high altitude "20,000 foot chart". From an R&D perspective, the pre/post Fukushima K-40 difference signals it may be noteworthy of lower level investigation. As we don't have a research institute behind us to fund detail study, we instead hope for good crowd sourced input such as yours.
ReplyDeleteAnd from a non-biological influenced control mechanism, the mathematical case you layout is sound. However, Potassium levels are biologically controlled. And, the influence of any of the Group 1 elements might differentially affect that control process and therefore have non-linear influences on the K-40 levels as measured in any subcomponent of the body. But at the whole body detection level, I would think your statement would have to be correct.
It certainly is something that intellectually would be interesting to chase down further. As it stands now, the delta in K-40 levels is just a flag that signals us to stay conservative in our risk mitigation procedures
If we had time and budget a lot more could be done; but one key thing to remember is that our driver is wise, cost efficient, risk mitigation. As such, we pursue scientific certainty only to the point that it does not reduce our ability to make wise, system level, cost effective, risk mitigation decisions.
Unfortunately, the totality of COTS tools and analytical methods being used to assess Fuksuhima were designed around detecting large discreet nuclear events. They were not designed to handle, interpret, or warn about on-going Fukushima type events. Therefore, the tools / methods usually throw out or ignore short half radiation as an indicator, and ignore the threat of cumulative so-called "non-detects". It is a situation that makes it difficult to perform timely and cost effective analysis using those tools.
Ideally, I would have liked to have used the raw unprocessed data from the pre-Fukushima beef as the reference 'background' level the ORTEC Gamma software used to post process the raw data from the Post-Fukushima beef. What you see in the video is our attempt to mimic that method using the post processed data.
I appreciate the work you are doing to inform the public but I would like to point out a few things I noticed in the last graph you present in your video. You mentioned that Cerium-143 is seen in 2011 & 2012. Gammavision, as well as most other commercially available software for isotope identification are not intelligent in how they determine what isotopes are there. It is very important for the user to determine if the software assessment is accurate. Ce-143’s most prominent gamma is at 293keV with a probability of 42%. Your software doesn’t find this peak, instead it identifies the 140keV peak which only occurs in .08% of decays. You must also consider if it is even makes sense to see Cerium in the spectrum. With a half-life of 33 hours it is clear that it must have been produced recently in the beef from some heavier isotope (that we are assuming is present in nuclear reactors). There are 3 production modes for Ce-143; 2 are through neutron activation and one is as a fission product. You can immediately throw of neutron activation, it simply doesn’t happen outside of a nuclear reactor. As a fission product it is extremely rare (~10^-8 from spontaneous fission of U-238), meaning that you should only expect to see it when you have large amounts of Uranium in the sample. This is not the case based on the evidence in your study.
ReplyDeleteIf this were the only error in software identification it might be more easily dismissible but after eyeing just a few of the isotopes one might expect to encounter it was clear that there are many more errors. Cs-134 was identified at 801keV. Again, this is not a prominent peak. There are 2 much more prominent peaks at 605 and 795keV, which are not found. U-235 has a peak at 185keV which is over 5 times stronger than the one identified in this study, the same goes for Bi-214. The Th-234 peak that is listed here is difficult to identify even with state of the art, large volume Germanium detectors. Needless to say it is not one of the prominent peaks of Th-234.
I was looking at some of the other isotopes and immediately thought, there is no way these could be there. K-42 is a medical tracer. It is not a common medical tracer and its half-life is only 12 hours so it would already have disappeared from its system if it was in its diet. Also, it’s not produced in fission reactions. Therefore It is not possible to find this isotope in the beef.
I have not gone through the entire table but it appears very likely that most if not all of this data falls into the noise of the detection system. Unfortunately it is very difficult to perform high level gamma spectroscopy for $2000, especially when you are searching for signatures on the order of hundredths of Bq. It requires high resolution detectors, identical low background cave setups. It would have also been very nice if you took a control measurement in the same day or week of the sample measurement. This would produce a more reliable background subtraction.
You overlooked a few key things:
DeleteThe Kev chart you see is a DIFFERENCE chart.
The gamma lines you see are the ones that were NOT common to the pre-Fukushima beef +/- 1Kev.
The detections were performed by a professional lab using ORTEC equipment.
The ORTEC software identified all the peaks shown as being above background levels.
The software made identifications some of which are of higher uncertainty, but that does not negate the presence of the radioactivity. In that regard, you rejected the name K-42 but did not dig as deep into what else might be responsible for the 898.97 Kev detection. (that would have been a better approach)
One thing we did mention in an earlier video is that there are short half life contaminants in some of the July 2011 beef (tested in 2012) that indicate recent airborne contamination of the sample; we suspect that contamination was from an April time frame fuel rod fire in Fukushima. Other data is now coming out indicating a significant criticality at that time.
We appreciate the time you took to dig through the data; just be aware that there will be much less uncertainty in your conclusions if you base your analysis on the Kev spectrum data. By focusing on the interpreted uncertain identifications of the Kev data as the basis of your analysis, you have added an avoidable level of uncertainty and greatly increased the chance for erroneous conclusions. Its the type of error that makes it easy to shoot down a primrose path.
The key with doing this kind of work is not to just look at a particular data point, but instead look at the system of data points and see if there are any connections.
I understand that this is a difference chart, but this difference must be analysed objectively. The fact remains that the data is not consistent with many of the isotopes that have been identified by the software. I have worked with Ortec equipment and with their representatives for several years and can assure you that there analysis tools are still quite limited and it is currently still best to have a professional human analysis of the data.
DeleteI completely agree with you that the studies made after 2010 show higher levels of radiation. However, without a more thorough control test, it is impossible to know if the higher level of radiation was in the beef or simply in the local background. Radiation levels vary everyday with wind, rain, pressure, temperature, ... so from a scientific standpoint, all this says is that the overall background was higher on the day of testing.
The misidentified K-42 along with Cs-134, and the other misidentified peaks that i mentioned earlier are more likely to be an overall increase in the background continuum rather than an increase in any particular isotope. I say that because of the number of peaks which are in error, it is not only the lack of the second Co-60. Even the lack of Cs-137 in the 2012 study indicates that there is a serious problem with this data. If you look at professional assessments from institutes such as UC Berkeley, you will find that Cs-137 is still present in background (not just beef but all background). Some of this is from Fukushima, while some is from Chernobyl and US weapons testing. It has gone down since 2011 but remains easily identifiable (above pre-fukushima levels) even in small HPGe detectors. This leads me to believe that the data you present is very near the MDA of your detector system. So for me it is useless to try to figure out what peak is at 898.97keV because it is likely to be below your MDA. Regardless, i did do a search for gammas between 897-900keV and could not find anything that stands out as being a likely contaminant. The possible candidates are all rare isotopes that would not be found in noticeable quantities from a reactor on their own.
The fact that the data is in error is not to say that there isn't a potential problem but it does mean that you have to be much more careful with how far you can delve into this particular data set. It is all too easy to form erroneous conclusions when you use data that hasn't been correctly analyzed. I believe that this data was performed by a professional lab but based on the graphs shown in the video it is clear that something was lost in the interpretation of that data.
The key is first and foremost to understand what you are looking at. If you know what you are looking at, you can make an assessment as to where it came from.
You're still making a few mistakes that are throwing off your analysis. If you think of the gamma chart as the product of using the pre-Fukushima gamma lines as a COMB bandwidth filter to remove common data lines from the Post-Fukushima tests, I think you'll see that you don't have enough data to support most of your conclusions. There is also an issue with your analysis because the methodologies are based on assumptions that are not valid post-Fukushima.
DeleteFor example, you point out that a 42% probability Ce-143 line at 293keV is missing from the chart and your conclusion is that therefore Ce-143 is not indicated. Moreover, you point out the Ce-143 is a neutron activation product and as a result would not be expected outside of a reactor, hence that is not the cause.
The holes in your analysis are as follows.
(1) The gamma chart has been cleaned of gamma lines common to the Pre-Fukushima beef. Any gamma detection energy between 292KeV and 294KeV would have COMB'ed the 293kev detection from the chart in the video. Based on that information you don't have enough information/data to support your conclusion.
(2) There is a potential issue with your use of statistics to back your analysis. Setting aside issue (1) above for the moment. You expect to see a 42% probability of the 293Kev gamma and 0.08% probability of the 140KeV peak. However, those distributions are population based, they don't account for geometry, nor do they account for the medium. Just like its possible to role a "6" on a dice six times in a row, the same possibility exists for a small population gamma detection, especially when the detector is imperfect with imperfect capture geometry, using an impure medium.
(3) The detection assumptions in industry are based on the primary assumption that there is NOT an ongoing active contamination source. It is a very nonscientific mistake to use that assumption in light of the ongoing events at Fukushima. It is a mistake that comes from following rules of thumb instead of understanding the theory driving those rules and under what circumstances they are misapplied. Key examples are: disregarding Ce-143 because it requires a nuclear reactor; scientific method would have ruled-in the possibility of Ce-143 because there is an ongoing uncontrolled nuclear reaction upwind. In the same light, it is not conservative or scientific to refer to un-identified radiation as "background radiation" when there is a known source producing fallout up wind. Even terms such a minimal detectable levels are an improper usage when there is on going fallout. Moreover, setting a MDL at 2 sigma is only warranted under the assumption of no known on going source, with an on going source such as Fuksuhima a MDL should be set at 1 sigma. The proper terminology for MDL would be something like Minimum IDENTIFIABLE Level, as it indicates that something is there but one does not have enough information to name it.
Of course none of that means Ce-143 is in the sample, it only means that the methods you used to rule it out are not scientifically valid. Instead good science would call for further investigation based on the evidence at hand. If we had the budget and equipment to do follow up we would, unfortunately people with the equipment and budget don't want do and/or publish such analysis. They would rather rule it out using faulty ground rules because the implications are not pleasant. Since we don't have the support to dig deeper, we aim at a different threshold, namely cost effective risk mitigation. Because of that, the conclusions we draw in the video are limited and high level, but they are conservative.
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DeleteWe appreciate you spending the time; we also appreciate that you finally stated your bias. Your major concern seems to be that we don't suppress the data that others would hide. If this report had been done by the hacks at UCB it would have been reported as all 'no detects', except for a small detection of Cs-137 in 2011. That detection would have been explained in terms of Bananas. Afterall, people eat a lot less Bananas than beef.
DeleteUCB would never tell people that as a staple the Cs-137 detect in the beef is within a order of magnitude of exceeding EPA limits. Nor would they caution people that other cuts of meat might have even higher levels. BTW where is UCB on testing all those California staples that are showing contaminated in Japan; heck 10 bq/kg in California Pistachios and no UCB in sight. What would happen to UCB's funding if they started looking at major cash crops? UCB would get the Medfly treatment!
The concerning thing about your input is that you didn't pay attention to the video; that, or you desire to argue a strawman. The only things we say about Ce-143 is that it was the software's guess and that the gamma lines show up in both post-Fukushima tests and not in pre-Fukushima. We considered mentioning that it might actually be from the Mo99/Tc99m decay chain instead, but we wanted to see if anyone else might suggest that. Obviously you didn't suggest that, why?
In addition, what makes you think that "calibrating the geometry" in any way improves the population statistics? That's like thinking you can multiply a population by a given factor to make up for a lack of population. Given your stated background, can you numerically quantify "extremely low statistics"? How many cps would that be for a kg of ground beef? Especially a reading that has been post processed by the ORTEC software?
More importantly, by your definition of "background" radiation TEPCO could tell all their employees they should not worry about working at the destroyed reactors because it is all only background radiation until someone specifically identifies it.
"Background" is a relative term; you wish it to mean relative to radiation which you can't or won't identify. The true definition is 'background' is relative to radiation that is not supposed to be there; and that is exactly what the gamma chart we released is designed to show- it uses the pre-Fukushima beef as background.
And that seems to be your concern, we are not hiding stuff you would like to dismiss as 'background'. If the public's safety were in the hearts of the people who run that "background" scam, they would take those gamma lines and assume that they represent contamination at ATLEAST the 95% confidence interval quantity, and perform health physics assessments from that level. Instead, what they do is say nothing is there.
In short, your stance comes down to that a murder is not a death until the killer has been identified, and that the neighbors should not be alerted because of that very fact.
Out of curiosity since you show concern about our donations, do you think that if we made a donation to UCB BRAWN team that they would share ALL their raw data with us, LOL? All our raw data is available to anyone who donated before we released the results. Anyone donating afterwards will have to wait till the next round of tests.
Now after all that, if you want to discuss our actual conclusions instead of your Ce-143 straw man, see them in the reply below:
Actually many people with the means and the equipment do this kind of testing, and some publish their results as well. UCB and the BRAWM team continue to publish the results of food, soil, water, and air samples. They look at the data from an academic perspective so they make no assumptions that cant be proven. There is no Ce-143 in these samples
ReplyDeleteAs i have tried to explain before, even though this is a subtraction of the pre-fukushima results, seeing a 140keV peak without the 293keV peak means that you can't scientifically make a claim to see Ce-143. What you see is a few extra counts of radiation around 140keV. This could be a Compton scatter of some radioactive element, it can be cosmic rays, it could be Ce-143, but for lack of scientific evidence it is an increase in background from the one pre-fukushima test.
It is valid to call unidentified radiation, background until you figure out exactly what it is. In case you or other readers aren't aware, background radiation is damaging just like any other radiation. By saying background, i am not trying to say that we shouldn't think about it, i am simply saying that it is part of our background since your test found it in 2011 and 2012. You performed this test in a way that couldn't determine where it comes from so it is scientific to call it background.
Your point on geometry and medium are not relevant. The first thing any good lab will do is calibrate the detector for geometry. We are talking about ground beef here, the medium is not going to effect gammas above about 50keV. The argument of medium and geometry only hurts your claim since they attenuate lower energies more than they do high energies (ie the 293keV peak would be even likelier to show up if Ce-143 were actually there).
The dice argument is also valid, unfortunately it is only valid for extremely low statistics which means that your claim of 95% confidence of anything on that chart is absurd. It isn't scientific or fair to the public to report data in this way if you have such low statistics.
I would not have spent so much time in these discussions if you weren't accepting donations but I feel as though it is a disservice to accept peoples money if you are not going to report your findings in a scientific manner. If you are using very small statistics, that is fine but you should say that in the video so people can make a more informed decision on whether or not to continue donating to your research. If you are using non-standard methods of making your conclusions of isotopes you have found, that is fine but let people know what method you used so people can decide if they trust it.
Since you deleted your original comment, well just Re-reply here:
DeleteWe appreciate you spending the time; we also appreciate that you finally stated your bias. Your major concern seems to be that we don't suppress the data that others would hide. If this report had been done by the hacks at UCB it would have been reported as all 'no detects', except for a small detection of Cs-137 in 2011. That detection would have been explained in terms of Bananas. Afterall, people eat a lot less Bananas than beef.
UCB would never tell people that as a staple the Cs-137 detect in the beef is within a order of magnitude of exceeding EPA limits. Nor would they caution people that other cuts of meat might have even higher levels. BTW where is UCB on testing all those California staples that are showing contaminated in Japan; heck 10 bq/kg in California Pistachios and no UCB in sight. What would happen to UCB's funding if they started looking at major cash crops? UCB would get the Medfly treatment!
The concerning thing about your input is that you didn't pay attention to the video; that, or you desire to argue a strawman. The only things we say about Ce-143 is that it was the software's guess and that the gamma lines show up in both post-Fukushima tests and not in pre-Fukushima. We considered mentioning that it might actually be from the Mo99/Tc99m decay chain instead, but we wanted to see if anyone else might suggest that. Obviously you didn't suggest that, why?
In addition, what makes you think that "calibrating the geometry" in any way improves the population statistics? That's like thinking you can multiply a population by a given factor to make up for a lack of population. Given your stated background, can you numerically quantify "extremely low statistics"? How many cps would that be for a kg of ground beef? Especially a reading that has been post processed by the ORTEC software?
More importantly, by your definition of "background" radiation TEPCO could tell all their employees they should not worry about working at the destroyed reactors because it is all only background radiation until someone specifically identifies it.
"Background" is a relative term; you wish it to mean relative to radiation which you can't or won't identify. The true definition is 'background' is relative to radiation that is not supposed to be there; and that is exactly what the gamma chart we released is designed to show- it uses the pre-Fukushima beef as background.
And that seems to be your concern, we are not hiding stuff you would like to dismiss as 'background'. If the public's safety were in the hearts of the people who run that "background" scam, they would take those gamma lines and assume that they represent contamination at ATLEAST the 95% confidence interval quantity, and perform health physics assessments from that level. Instead, what they do is say nothing is there.
In short, your stance comes down to that a murder is not a death until the killer has been identified, and that the neighbors should not be alerted because of that very fact.
Out of curiosity since you show concern about our donations, do you think that if we made a donation to UCB BRAWN team that they would share ALL their raw data with us, LOL? All our raw data is available to anyone who donated before we released the results. Anyone donating afterwards will have to wait till the next round of tests.
Now after all that, if you want to discuss our actual conclusions instead of your Ce-143 straw man, see them in the reply below:
What we have concluded based on all the food testing is:
Delete(1) Fukushima fallout did contaminate mid-west beef, specifically Cs-137.
(2) The Cs-137 contamination is within 1 order of magnitude of EPA water limits
(3) The 2012 drought has reduced contamination.
(4) The soil type of the farm in question, and the grass feed, serve to reduce the risk of bio-available Cs contamination.
(5) There are indications of a fuel rod fire during the April 2012 time frame.
(6) There are indications of Co-60 and Sb-124 in the 2012 beef.
(7) There is a correlation between Fukushima Fallout levels and Radon daughter products.
(8) Cost effective risk mitigation is wise.
As you may see, none of that references the Ce-143 you focused on
BRAWN isn't funded by any industry, they use equipment that was donated for academic research. But if you are deeply into conspiracy theories then i guess there is no point talking further about this.
DeleteOnce again, I dont say Background in a dismissive way.
to your points:
1. Yes it did. US Nuclear testing contaminated it with larger quantities of Cs-137 but you are right.
2. You are probably siting a study on rain water. Don't drink rain water, it contains many hazardous pollutants, many of which are much more dangerous than the radiation. Drinking water is not near EPA limits, not even close.
3. Radiation decays, so yes you see less in 2012 than in 2011.
4. Also true, scientific studies from Academic and Government projects have shown this in the past.
5. Ok
6. As i had explained before Co-60 is unlikely to be there. As with all of the other Isotopes that were incorrectly identified Sb-124 is also missing its prominent 602keV peak, so no, there are no indications of that either.
7. this statement doesn't make sense. Correlation in what way. If you mean that when it rains, radiation levels are higher then yes, There are many studies that show this. You should read some of the papers, they are quite fascinating.
8. I agree, panic based on spurious data is however not wise, but a great way to get people to give you money.
So to sum your position up: its a "conspiracy" to even consider that funding might influence UCB; the greatest danger to the public is "panic"; and "panic" is also a great business model. It just make me wonder why the Japanese have not used the Fukushima "panic" to rebuild their economy.
DeleteA true danger is someone who wishes to withhold information because they believe they know best how others should respond to such information. An ever greater danger is someone who sees their livelihood and industry at risk.
So we ask again, why did you not suggest the Tc99m decay chain as a source?
re: "If you previously donated and would like a copy of the lab data for your own personal use please email at the address in your PayPal receipt."
ReplyDeleteI had donated and I sent an email expressing interest in getting a copy of this data back on August 25, but I never got a response (or a copy of the data). I am still interested in getting a copy of it.
Thanks
The error was ours; thanks for bringing it to our attention.
DeleteWe just emailed the 3 pdf reports to you; if they don't arrive or are to big for your inbox please let us know.