Radioactive iodine in rainwater: Canada’s public was in the dark

ALEX ROSLIN
Montreal Gazette
January 15, 2012

After the Fukushima nuclear accident, Canadian health officials assured a nervous public that virtually no radioactive fallout had drifted to Canada.

But last March, a Health Canada monitoring station in Calgary detected an average of 8.18 becquerels per litre of radioactive iodine (an isotope released by the nuclear accident) in rainwater, the data shows.

The level easily exceeded the Canadian guideline of six becquerels of iodine per litre for drinking water, acknowledged Eric Pellerin, chief of Health Canada’s radiation-surveillance division.

[...] Canadian authorities didn’t disclose the high radiation reading at the time.

Read full article

This article was posted: Sunday, January 15, 2012 at 1:58 pm

---

---

---

---