P!
I cannot even imagine the long-term implications of this disaster for Japan. Cesnium (and stronium) as I understand it stay around for a long, long time.
It seems to me that it would make more sense to trace the origins of the offending tea leaves and not buy from affected areas rather than going after an entire industry.
Fallout zone fuku levels are in line with those found after a nuclear bomb test
Soil samples in areas outside the 20-kilometer (12 miles) exclusion zone around the Fukushima plant measured more than 1.48 million becquerels a square meter, the standard used for evacuating residents after the Chernobyl accident, Tomio Kawata, a fellow at the Nuclear Waste Management Organization of Japan, said in a research report published May 24 and given to the government.Radiation from the plant has spread over 600 square kilometers (230 square miles), according to the report. The extent of contamination shows the government must move fast to avoid the same future for the area around Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant as Chernobyl, scientists said. Technology has improved since the 1980s, meaning soil can be decontaminated with chemicals or by planting crops to absorb radioactive materials, allowing residents to return.
I guess the rest of the radioactivity remained within the used tea leaves, and didn't leach out into the tea.
One would also hope that their legal limit is conservative, in which case being slightly over the limit probably isn't a real health risk.
But it is clear Japan is on top of this, and is testing and taking those tests seriously.
Wonder how they did their test? Did they take a kilo of tea leaves and brew all of it and then report the total becquerels for gallons of tea? A kilogram would make alot of tea. Did they select a serving of tea leaves and brew it into a cup and the amount of tea in cup is used to report becquerels?