Fukushima's biological effects

Posted on: Sat, 08/16/2014 - 16:13 By: Tom Swiss

But hey, we'll get the next generation of fission reactors safe, really!

Fukushima's legacy (EurekAlert!)

...[S]cientists began gathering biological information only a few months after the disastrous meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan in 2011. Results of these studies are now beginning to reveal serious biological effects of the Fukushima radiation on non-human organisms ranging from plants to butterflies to birds.

A series of articles summarizing these studies has now been published in the Journal of Heredity. These describe widespread impacts, ranging from population declines to genetic damage to responses by the repair mechanisms that help organisms cope with radiation exposure.