Abstract
After the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP), much of the wild and edible mushrooms and plants in the surrounding areas were contaminated with radiocesium (137Cs). To elucidate their concentration characteristics, we analyzed 137Cs radioactivity data in edible forest products brought in for food inspection by the residents of Kawauchi Village, 12–30 km away from the FDNPP, from 2012 to 2019. A Bayesian model to estimate 137Cs concentration was constructed. Parameters of the normalized concentration of species (NCsp) for mushrooms were similar to those of the same species obtained in a previous study. Although NCsp values were highly varied among species, mycorrhizal mushrooms tended to have high NCsp values, followed by saprotrophic mushrooms, and wild edible plants values were low. Also, half of mycorrhizal mushroom species (8 of 16) showed an increasing trend in concentration with time; however, saprotrophic mushrooms and wild plants generally demonstrated a decreasing trend (22 of 24). The model considering the sub-village location information decreased the error of individual samples by 40% compared to the model not considering any location information, indicating that the detailed geo-information improved estimation accuracy. Our results indicate that the radioactivity data from samples collected by local residents can be used to accurately assess internal exposure to radiation due to self-consumption of contaminated wild mushrooms and plants.
Highlights
After the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP), much of the wild and edible mushrooms and plants in the surrounding areas were contaminated with radiocesium (137Cs)
The parameter of normalized concentration of species (NCsp) was evaluated as a characteristic of radiocesium concentration in species; it was reported that the concentration characteristics varied more than 100 folds among wild mushroom species
From the food inspection results in Kawauchi Village, 137Cs concentration data of wild mushrooms and plants for a total of 4534 specimens of 40 species taken from May 2012 to March 2020 were obtained (Table 1)
Summary
After the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP), much of the wild and edible mushrooms and plants in the surrounding areas were contaminated with radiocesium (137Cs) To elucidate their concentration characteristics, we analyzed 137Cs radioactivity data in edible forest products brought in for food inspection by the residents of Kawauchi Village, 12–30 km away from the FDNPP, from 2012 to 2019. Our results indicate that the radioactivity data from samples collected by local residents can be used to accurately assess internal exposure to radiation due to self-consumption of contaminated wild mushrooms and plants. Komatsu et al.[22] analyzed the public extensive radioactivity data of wild mushrooms collected for the food monitoring by local governments They analyzed using mushroom data from 3019 samples of 107 species collected in 265 municipalities by the model. It has been difficult to precisely describe the effect of region on the radioactivity of wild foods
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