Abstract
Even after 7 years of the nuclear accident that occurred in 2011 at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant (F1NPP), high levels of 137Cs have been detected in ambient aerosols from some polluted areas of Fukushima. Higher levels of radionuclides were often observed in the atmosphere during and after rain events. We presume that biological processes such as fungal activity associated with higher relative humidity may be involved with a possible emission of radioactivity to the atmosphere, which was originally emitted from the F1NPP accident and was deposited over the ground, forest, soil, etc. Here, we report, for the first time, relationships of 137Cs and organic tracers of fungal spores (i.e., arabitol, mannitol and trehalose) in the aerosol samples collected from Fukushima, Japan. Although we found twice-higher concentrations of 137Cs at nighttime than at daytime, fungal spore tracers did not show a consistent trend to 137Cs, that is, organic tracers at nighttime were similar with those at daytime or were even higher in daytime. This study has not clearly demonstrated that fungal spores are the important source of high levels of 137Cs at nighttime. The current unclear relationship is probably associated with the sampling strategy (four consecutive days with a sampling on/off program for day/nighttime samples) taken in this campaign, which may have caused a complicated meteorological situation.
Highlights
A severe nuclear accident (International Nuclear Event Scale: INES level 7 meltdown of three reactors) occurred in March 2011 at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant (F1NPP) operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) a few days after the earthquake and subsequent tsunamis, causing serious contamination of radionuclides in the environments over the wide areas of eastern Japan, covering Fukushima and surrounding prefectures, and the adjacent western North Pacific
We examined atmospheric behavior of spores emitted from fungi that are grown on the forest surface by analyzing fungal spore tracers
We report, for the first time, on the simultaneous measurements of radioactive and organic tracers of fungal spores in ambient aerosols from Fukushima, East Japan, to evaluate the potential importance of fungi to the soil-to-air emission of 137 Cs originally emitted from the nuclear accident in 2011
Summary
A severe nuclear accident (International Nuclear Event Scale: INES level 7 meltdown of three reactors) occurred in March 2011 at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant (F1NPP) operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) a few days after the earthquake and subsequent tsunamis, causing serious contamination of radionuclides in the environments over the wide areas of eastern Japan, covering Fukushima and surrounding prefectures, and the adjacent western North Pacific. In the biogeochemical cycles of radioactive elements in the forest soil systems, fungal activities may play an important role in the emission of radiocesium from the soil surface to the atmosphere based on the study of the Chernobyl nuclear accident [14]. Selected sugar compounds such as arabitol, mannitol and trehalose have been used as organic tracers to discuss the nighttime emission of fungal spores from the forest area in Japan [28]. Atmosphere 2022, 13, 413 tracers and radioactivity in the ambient aerosols collected from Fukushima and to better understand a possible biological emission of 137 Cs from forests to the atmosphere
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