Radiation drifting from the Fukushima nuclear plant could hit the United States west coast as early as next Month The International Business Times reported.
"There's a point to be made that we live in a radioactive world and the ocean just has radioactive isotopes in it," Ken Buesseler, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts told Bloomberg. "People have a limited knowledge of radioactivity," Buesseler told Bloomberg.
The west coast could also see the toxic effects from other facilities including Californa's Diablo Canyon, which outputs an increased amount of the harmful energy compared to Fukushima.
Experts expect the radiation to head to Washington prior to going south riding the waves of the Atlantic Ocean The Times reported. Waters in Vancouver, British Columbia have already been found to have the cesium 134 isotope, and scientists are monitoring its detection on the west coast.
While scientists do not know how much radiation United States west coast waters will contain, they are still awaiting the answer which could include the kind of isoptes that hits the shores of the Pacific Ocean.
"I'm not trying to be alarmist," Buesseler said in a statement USA Today reported. "We can make predictions, we can do models. But unless you have results, how will we know it's safe?"
If Cesium 134 were to hit, the waters could become extremely harmful since they give off skin eating gamma rays
"There's been a lot of confusion between the levels of radiation that have been detected and levels that are harmful," Chad Nelsen, environmental director at the San Clemente-based Surfrider Foundation, told U-T San Diego. "So far, there have been no levels that are a real concern."
At least 20 trillion becquerels or the SI figure for radioactivity of cesium 137, 10 trillion of strontium 90 and 40 trillion measurements of tritium have reportedly seeped into the Atlantic Ocean dating back to the 2011 predicament.
