Posted on 06/03/2011 6:39:22 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Gov't halts shipment of tea leaves in 4 prefectures over high radiation levels
The government on June 2 ordered a halt to shipments of tea leaves produced throughout Ibaraki Prefecture and parts of Kanagawa, Chiba and Tochigi prefectures, after detecting radioactive cesium in leaves exceeding the legal limit.
Tests carried out in the wake of the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, from which large amounts of radioactive materials have leaked, detected radiation exceeding the legal limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram of tea leaves.
It is the first time for the government to halt shipments of tea under the Special Law on Nuclear Disaster Countermeasures. Since the concentration of cesium changes during each of the steps in which tea is produced -- from drying the leaves to create unrefined tea to processing them and making them into a drink -- the government had been considering which stages of the production process to halt.
Most of this season's first crop of tea has already been processed into unrefined tea, or "aracha," and on June 2 the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare ordered new inspections of aracha. Up until now, there have been hardly any inspections of tea at this stage of the production process, and it is possible that tea containing radioactive materials exceeding the legal limit has already been shipped out
(Excerpt) Read more at mdn.mainichi.jp ...
P!
The Japanese Tea Party?
That party will make you glow in the dark.:-)
http://www.mhlw.go.jp/english/topics/2011eq/index.html
They also cancelled sveral restrictions on vegetables.
Most of them it looks like.
Good thing we have a garden and are stocked up on tea.
How far from fukushima nuke plant (aka ground zero) are these agricultural areas?
Well, I live in Chiba, and it’s roughly 150 miles from Fukushima :/
And I drink lots of tea >.<
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