THE NUMBERS & ANALYSIS
Tonight I tested turkey hot dogs bought at a store in West Los Angeles. Spot detecting with the Inspector yielded what seemed to be elevated ionization. Taking into account the instrument’s 15% margin of error, according to the manufacturers, the detection warranted a deeper investigation.
Before testing, I took an Interior 10-minute average completed at 6:55 pm of 391 ionizing events detected by the Inspector or 39.1 Counts Per Minute (CPM).
I then completed a ten minute average of the franks with their thick plastic packaging still intact which had the undesired result of eliminating any possible alpha radiation emitters thereby possibly skewing the results lower than if I had tested the wieners out of the package. I didn’t want to open the package in case I would return them to the store for a refund.
The hot dog average total was 457 counts or 45.7 CPM. This is 16.9% above the previous background at 7:35 pm.
Investigating the contents of the turkey, nothing stood out as radioactive with the possibility of three substances I wasn’t fully up to speed on: potassium lactate, sodium erythorbate and sodium nitrite. These chemicals appear non-radioactive.
At 7:50 pm, I took another ten-minute average which was 38.5 CPM. The hot dogs, in their packaging, tested 18.7% higher than this subsequent averaging.
This is a significant amount of radiation over what one would expect buying these turkey hot dogs, the amount exceeding the Inspector’s margin of error twice. One would expect the product, unless “naturally” radioactive like bananas and brazil nuts, to not ionize at all. The danger of possible contamination of these hotdogs is digesting radiation like Cesium-137 with a half life of 30.17 years, the same poison found in CalPoly dairy farm milk June 14 at an amount a fraction under what for drinking water would be the Maximum Contamination Level.
These HOT dogs packed a little more punch than I had bargained for.
Hi Michael,
Thanks for the link to your Spoonglow article. The more I learn, the more disturbing it gets. 🙁
Why doesn’t more of the public know about these things??? Why aren’t more people outraged and speaking out and demanding a change? It seems to me to be a crime against humanity that we would allow our government to sanction the use of recycled radioactive waste in products we use every day (especially like eating utensils that go in our mouths!) I’m wondering if our office chairs or tables may be contaminated and exposure us to radiation on a daily basis for 8 or more hours a day while we’re working, etc.?!
This is unconscionable. With Fukushima still spewing radiation into our environment, how much exposure to radiation can the human body take??? As horrific as it is, Fukushima’s radiation releases are due to an accident. But here in the U.S., we are purposefully exposing people to radiation by putting it into consumer products??? Have we lost our minds? Unbelievable!!
Are there any of our large international environmental groups currently doing anything to fight this? Has anyone created a petition against this practice that you know of? I’d love to sign it if so. (I regularly sign petitions for causes I care about on Change.org and Care2.org. I’ve just never seen one about this. But if not, we need to create one!)
Regarding donations: I would love to be able to afford to donate to your cause. Unfortunately, the economy has hit our family hard. 🙁 I know many of us are in a similar situation; that is why I was suggesting you seek out someone with deep pockets to help you purchase the equipment.
Anyway, keep up the good work! I’ll have to read through your archives and learn more about what environmental dangers are out there so I can become more informed and ultimately, try and help protect my family as much as humanly possible…
Take care,
WA
@ WA: I wrote “Spoonglow” ten years ago, one of the first articles on the dangers of recycled radioactive goo, so thanks for the heads up. Of course we checked the stool. Thank you for your fundraising advice. We’re an investigative journalism outfit not a non-profit and as such welcome your donations. Especially yours, WA, because you clearly care about the work we’re doing. The donation button is on this page and it’s easy to give.
@ Angusmerlin: That doesn’t appear to be an artificial spike but without knowing exactly where the monitoring station is, it’s impossible to supply the public with information that has health and safety implications.That reading says to me that it isn’t close to Radiation Station.
Hi Michael,
Thanks for all your efforts to help us make sense of a senseless situation. I wanted to share some tips on testing for radiation from the French organization CRIIAD (criiad.org). They have some very informative videos on YouTube (in English). You can also use Google Translate to translate their website from French to English.
One of the videos (found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DBjIN4CwUa-Q&usg=ALkJrhhO-mZ8SZGXoNtxTgpbf1sr2ooAPg) cautions that testing with a radiation testing device, you should cover them with plastic bags to prevent the device becoming contaminated.
Another one of their videos (found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvBoQfN18zs&feature=related) demonstrates how the sample size is very important, depending on how much contamination there is per volume. It shows contaminated mushrooms being tested, but the smaller sample size did not register as contaminated, even though it was. Only the larger sample size registered on their equipment. The video is also helpful as it instructs how to conduct a valid measurement.
Finally, I noticed that in your hot dog testing, the sample was placed on top of what looks like a metal and rubber step stool. I recently learned that there is an unfortunate practice in the U.S. (and Sweden) in which radioactive waste metals are recycled and used to create consumer products (things like furniture, building materials, ballast, etc.)
Here’s a couple links that discuss this:
http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/43577
http://satori.hubpages.com/hub/Radioactive-Waste-Now-Hidden-in-Everyday-Household-Products
(The second link also discusses the history of what appeared to be an multinational practice of dumping toxic waste off the coast of Somalia.)
Crazy, huh? So, the point is that I would test the stool’s metal by itself for radioactivity too, just in case.
I do hope you can get enough funding to cover the larger testing device, and to get proper training to run it, as I know there are a growing number of concerned citizens (especially on the West Coast) who would like to have their food tested in a transparent, trust-worthy manner.
Just a thought:
As you are in L.A., have you thought of contacting some celebrities who might want to lend their name to your cause as well as help fund your research? You might also want to join forces with others, create a 501(c)3 non-profit so you can get donations and be run by a board of respected individuals with expertise in radiation testing, etc.
Best of luck and keep up the good work!
WA
@ WTF: In my experience, it costs between $450 to $500+ to test for a full range of radionuclides for a single sample. It simply isn’t worth testing just one sample at this price. What I need is the ability to immediately determine the isotopes in food, water and other media samples with no limitations. I’ve asked Radiation Station readers to help out with this in Eat Me where I wrote:
But you and I all are contributing $700 billion of taxpayer dollars to maintain and upgrade our nuclear weapons systems for ten years according to a plan by President Obama. But not a nickel for Fukushima fallout food analysis because, as Mark the Bark Bandstra of U.C. Berkeley says, it’s “impossible” for any fallout to reach the U.S. and impact the food despite ample evidence collected by U.C. Berkeley itself to the contrary.
Here’s my latest offer to folks who donate $1,000 or more for me to buy this Ludlum Isotopic Identifier: I’ll test one sample (food or otherwise) a week that you send to EnviroReporter.com‘s Radiation Station for a year and tell you exactly what is in your suspect sample (if there is anything at all). 52 times $500 per sample comes to $26,000 so your $1,000 would be just 4% of the cost to take the sample to the lab.
You folks certainly don’t have to do anything as we will continue this work (in addition to our long-form environmental investigations) anyway but a donation of any amount would certainly be welcome.
Michael-
There are several labs that will test for this stuff. Runs about $250-300 per sample, two week turnaround time.
Here is the link to one of the labs-http://www.emsl.com/index.cfm?nav=News&action=show&NewsID=621
Perhaps readers would donate to have some analytical testing done on specific items? Run a fund drive to test a given foodstuff, I’ll bet if you put a tipcup up to test peaches or hotdogs or whatever, you will have the funding in a short time.
Wow. I heard the more processed the food the less radiation. I can’t think of something more processed than a hot dog. I only eat the nitrate free ones from Whole Foods called Applegate turkey dogs. Curious about those. Try reading some from Trader Joes that are nitrate free maybe that has something to do with it. I think I am wishful thinking! OK so hot dogs now bite the dust off my grocery list. Man that stinks.
absolutely foolish to eat dead rotting meat in the form of hot dogs. the plans of the elite are continuing, kill off the masses.
Michael, interestingly, the article on radiation linked in one of your messages, says that we are getting the fallout in the rain from the high altitude radiation that is still in the atmosphere from the nuclear testing years ago, and this can go on for decades! And that Chernobyl does not account for the high radioactivity in the rains, as it’s explosion was still low altitude to account for the high altitude accumulation. So, I am wondering, if we have been, then, having huge radiation spikes since the late forties till the early sixties and didn’t even know it! This article was written before the Fukushima disaster. When I sent my Sister the nuclear testing map that went viral I told her we had already been nuked and didn’t know it… how right I was! Wouldn’t this account for the children’s high levels of leukemia in this country as well as the spike in cancers?
Also, thank you for testing eggs on Eat Me!!
Keep taking your supplements everyone!!
I wonder, with July 4th hot dog eating fest finished, how many people will wonder what is going on in their body? My husband was ill today, after drinking chocolate milk… sorry to have to tell him, it was most likely due to him being nuked! Well, maybe that made a believer out of him… he isn’t thinking I am so strange now days! And NO MORE BEEF for me! Thank you Michael!
Hmmm, I just ate a Turkey Hot Dog two days ago. And, I don’t even like Turkey hot dogs! I guess I will return to eating regular hot dogs. At least they taste better. I watched a video a few months ago called Food Inc. One of the things mentioned in the movie was how Oprah Winfrey got sued by the meat packing industry for making a comment on TV about doubting the wisdom of eating hamburger, after some stories about bacteria contaminated meat came out in the news. So, if they have no qualms about suing Oprah, with all her lawyers behind her, I guess they would have no problem with suing folks of more modest means either. I figure if the government comes out and just says everything is ok to eat, no risk of radiation damaging your health, then you wouldn’t stand much chance in a court case if you said the radiation content of a particular product was bad for one’s health. Hmmm, or would you? By the way, I’m starting Jury Duty next week.
I say “I want to return this” and do just that. My other option is to say “it’s hot,” bring the Inspector to show that it is and then watch as what I have done has no effect as the store doesn’t pull the other turkey hot dogs from the shelves.
It’s not just in the hot dogs. It’s in the powdered milk, chocolate, peaches and the list goes on and it’s getting longer. Since the government now refuses to test the food for Fukushima fallout, and the “scientists” at U.C. Berkeley’s BRAWM say it’s “impossible” for the fallout to have impacted America, we are left with me and my Inspector in Los Angeles.
Remember this the next time you go vote (if you even do that) and candidates rail against big government claiming the marketplace will do a better job of just about anything than would the government. I am the marketplace and my Inspector and intelligence are what stands between me, Denise and this fissile radiation fallout. But being the marketplace, I can’t tell you what the brand of the weenies is because of legal implications like getting sued. So you are left to either testing it yourself if you have an Inspector, following our Eat Me shopping, or zipping your mouth shut and chowing and chuggling radiation just like your neighbors (and their kids) are now.
This is America. This is just the beginning of radiation seeping through the marketplace and ending up on your dinner plate. The information clampdown is incredibly effective and has millions of willing dupes who happen to be your fellow citizens. Don’t be one of them. We’re not.
Also know that there are circumstances where we will show the brand(s) as we test it. This isn’t one of them as the “HOT Dogs?” video shows.
Michael, when you take it back to the store, what do you tell them? It’s hot? Or something more ambiguous?