In 2012, a trickle of data from Japan has shed some light on the contamination of California's food-growing Central Valley, which stretches from the Sacramento Valley southward to the South Central Coast (whose closest monitoring station is CDPH's San Luis Obispo setup).
A lab calling itself 'Security Tokyo' began releasing in 2012 radiation levels of cesium-134 and 137 in California-grown items. Among the first items tested - they were taken off the shelves of 'Super Tokyo' supermarket in Japan - were prunes and almonds grown in California in 2011.
Security Tokyo's July 2012 test found that the items contained similar levels of the twin cesium isotopes which indicate that a very large fraction of the isotopes came from the Fukushima disaster.
The levels of cesium-134 and cesium-137 ranged from 0.07-0.08 Becquerels per kilogram to 0.10 to 0.11 Becquerels per kilogram, respectively, in the snack items.4
(A becquerel is about 27 picocuries.)
In 2012, the lab also tested a navel orange grown in California and found 0.47 and
0.49 becquerels of cesium-134 and cesium-137, respectively in the pulp and rind (peel) of the citrus fruit.
Astoundingly, the Public Health Service's 1963 radiation monitoring reports show
that oranges grown in the U.S. Southwest (SW) (i.e., California) had on average less cesium-137 than what was found by the Japanese lab in 2012.
In August 2012, it was learned that a Japanese supermarket chain tested U.S.-exported pistachio nuts for radioactivity and found 9.54 becquerels per kilogram of cesium-137 but no detectable cesium-134. (98% of all pistachio nuts are grown in California.)
The pistachios contained about 95 times more cesium-137 than California almonds from 2011 and surpassed dozens of other food items in the supermarket's lab report for cesium content. The level of cesium-137 - a beta and gamma emitter produced in fission - in the pistachio nuts is equivalent to 257 picocuries per
kilogram, which makes it more contaminated than most food items tested by the U.S. Public Health Service during the peak of nuclear weapons testing fallout (in 1963)!
It is downright frightening to know that in one instance an orange grown in 2011 in California was 'hotter' than oranges grown there in the 1960s when hydrogen nuclear bombs were exploding in open-air at testing sites closer to the U.S. than Fukushima! It is even scarier that pistachios grown in the U.S. were the 'hottest' item in an 'isotopic test' selection of supermarket items in newly contaminated Japan in 2012!
A quick search in Wikipedia reveals that the San Joaquin Valley, which lies adjacent to the San Luis Obispo CDPH station and dairy farm, is where citrus products, almonds and nuts are grown. Other foods grown in the valley include a medley of vegetables, as well as cotton and grapes. Is the San Joaquin Valley harboring a secret hotspot from Fukushima?
Based on this analysis, which has utilized historical data, the meager monitoring data made available by U.S. state and federal agencies and two Japanese entities who are concerned about the radiation content of U.S.-grown foods, the answer is 'yes.'
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