Abstract
A large amount of radiocesium (137Cs + 134Cs) was released into the atmosphere and diffused mainly in the Tohoku and Kanto regions after the TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident in March 2011. Fallout radiocesium flows into rivers and lakes over time and has been taken up by living organisms. Although as of September 2019, more than 8 years have passed since the accident, freshwater fish contamination with radiocesium is still serious issue in some area because shipping restrictions and restraint have continued. Internal radiation exposure through the consumption of contaminated fish is of the public concerns. Therefore, it is important to understand the current contamination state in freshwater fish and to predict the trend of the contamination in future. Freshwater fishes have been captured from September 2015 in Lake Inba, Chiba Prefecture. Activity concentrations of 137Cs in the muscle of funa remained constant after November 2016. The similar trends were found for catfish, snakehead, largemouth bass, bluegill, and so on. In addition, effective half-life of 137Cs in muscle tissues of funa from Lake Inba was calculated about 9900 days. These results suggest that the same concentration level of 137Cs in 2018 will be seen for those fishes in the future. It is still important to monitor 137Cs in freshwater fish to provide information for predicting future concentration changes.
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Acknowledgments
This study was supported partially by a Grant-in-Aid from Fukushima Prefecture related to Research and Development in Radiological Sciences. The author thanks Prof. Toshio Furota and Maiko Kagami for support with sample collection and discussion on this study, Dr. Shigeo Uchida and Dr. Keiko Tagami for discussion, and Ms. Hiromi Utsumi and Ms. Megumi Yoshida for support with the laboratory work.
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Ishii, N. (2021). Annual Changes in 137Cs Concentrations in Freshwater Fishes. In: Nagao, S. (eds) Impacts of Fukushima Nuclear Accident on Freshwater Environments. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3671-4_8
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