Radioactivity in European organic products

More Cesium 137 Found In Gourmet & Organic European Jam Brands

Have some cesium 137 with your toast.

Simply Info

12 June, 2014

Most people assume that organic jam or even better yet, European gourmet or organic (bio)  jam would be a good option for quality and safety. In some respects that appears to be true but many of these high cost European jams have an unexpected surprise, cesium 137.

(Contaminated brands being sold in the US & Canada included towards the end with photos)

The Environmental Institute in Munich Germany produced a report in 2013 (English translation at the end of this report) that checked a wide variety of European jams for cesium 137 radioactivity. What they found was concerning. While the radioactivity levels were nowhere near the levels found in food soon after Fukushima in Japan they do show a clear problem. There is also no safe level of internal exposure. Cesium 137 is an artificial isotope that does not exist in nature, it comes from atomic bombs and nuclear reactor meltdowns. While low doses of these products would not make someone immediately ill they can contribute to health damage and accumulate over life. Cesium 137 ingested is slowly excreted from the body but can build up as someone consumes contaminated food on a regular basis. Cesium 137 has a biological half life of 70 days. This means if you consume cesium 137, half of it has been excreted back out of your body in 70 days. The time it stays in the human body can cause cellular damage and potentially lead to cancer. The US FDA level for government intervention is 1200 bq/kg of cesium 137 & 134 combined. This is the level where the FDA will bar the product from sale if they are made aware of it. This is not a guarantee of “safety” level. The intervention level in Japan is 100 bq/kg and the EU is 600 bq/kg.

Most of the cesium 137 found in these products is assumed to come from Chernobyl based on the fact that the ones with the most contamination are known to be contaminated by Chernobyl. Places like Bulgaria and Ukraine along with parts of eastern Europe, Finland and Sweden are known to have problems with cesium 137 in certain foods. Foods such as wild mushrooms and forest berries absorb higher levels of cesium 137 than other foods. Four of the samples tested that had contamination had berries from Canada but were European brand names. Why these products were contaminated is currently not confirmed. The brands are listed below in two tables (German and partial English) with the green flagged ones being no cesium, the red ones with the highest levels of cesium. Both of the “red” findings were organic brands of jam. The blueberry jams were more often contaminated than “mixed berry” jams that consists of raspberry, blackberry, strawberry in combinations.

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