No need to avoid fish post-Fukushima, but continue to be vigilant re: 20-story, fire-breathing lizards

Dear Real Fitness Nerd - Am I going to die of Japanese radiation poisoning because I eat fish? Love, A Nerd Herder

I've gotten this question from about a dozen people now. It may seem a little off-topic for this blog (and a little late - sorry), but I'm going to answer it anyway.

Most of the askers were people who know that seafood has long been a passion of mine - not eating it as much understanding the sociology, biology, and ethics of it. In fact, whether to call this blog the Real Fitness Nerd or the Real Fish Nerd was a flip of the coin. It has a lot to do with my love of the ocean, but I also think it's because I'm a pescatarian. It took a lot of soul searching to walk away from vegetarianism, so now I'd like to know as much as I can about that which I kill and eat.

Having put that in writing, it sounds a little sociopathic, but I'm going to run with it.

Anyway, nuclear seafood: I don't think you need to worry about it and here's why. First off, I had my friends at the New England School of Medicine write up a little report on the health effects of nuclear power plant accidents. Thanks, guys! Here are a few excerpts I'll use to make my point:

Reactor accidents can release a variety of radioisotopes into the environment. Table 1 lists the radioisotopes that were released during the Chernobyl accident. The health threat from each radioisotope depends on an assortment of factors. Radioisotopes with a very short half-life (e.g., 67 hours for molybdenum-99) or a very long half-life (e.g., 24,400 years for plutonium-239), those that are gaseous (e.g., xenon-133), and those that are not released in substantial quantities (e.g., plutonium-238) do not cause substantial internal or external contamination in reactor accidents. In contrast, iodine-131 can be an important source of morbidity because of its prevalence in reactor discharges and its tendency to settle on the ground. When iodine-131 is released, it can be inhaled or consumed after it enters the food chain, primarily through contaminated fruits, vegetables, milk, and groundwater. Once it enters the body, iodine-131 rapidly accumulates in the thyroid gland, where it can be a source of substantial doses of beta radiation.

The release of radioactive water into the sea at the Fukushima plant has resulted in an additional route whereby the food chain may be affected, through contaminated seafood. Although the radioactivity in seawater close to the plant may be transiently higher than usual by several orders of magnitude, it diffuses rapidly with distance and decays over time, according to half-life, both before and after ingestion by marine life.

and...

In accidents in which iodine-131 is released, persons in affected areas should attempt to minimize their consumption of locally grown produce and groundwater. However, since the half-life of iodine-131 is only 8 days, these local resources should not contain substantial amounts of iodine-131 after 2 to 3 months. On the advice of public health officials, area residents may take potassium iodide to block the uptake of iodine-131 in the thyroid. To be most effective, prophylactic administration of potassium iodide should occur before or within a few hours after iodine-131 exposure.

I'm not a doctor - I just play one on TV - so correct me if I'm wrong, but iodine 131 is the thing we need to worry about. But it has a half-live of 8 days and it diffuses super fast in the ocean, so unless you were eating sushi Fedexed from Japan, I don't think you need to worry. Not that I trust the FDA, but they don't seem to concerned either. Even if some radiation does work itself into the food chain, add up the various nuclear, environmental, and fishing watchdog groups keeping an eye on this and you've got yourself one nasty pack of pitbulls. If three-eyed mackerel starts showing up on dinner plates, we're gonna hear about it.

Between lefty bloggers hungry for content and "holistic" supplement sellers trying to overdose West Coasters on potassium iodide, I find the way this paranoia has been fed a little sad. We're supposed to be the fringe. Our paranoid ramblings are meant to expose deeper truths, not garner clicks and sell pills.

Thanks to Steph for pointing out this article. You never read my blog, so this thanks is wasted, but I'm still doing the right thing.