Mushrooms And Geiger Counters

jonerik writes "This article in the New York Times details the efforts being undertaken by Moscow food inspectors to keep radioactive produce out of the city's open-air markets and off of dinner tables. And the efforts are paying off, with seizures of 'hot' produce up by 10% so far this year vs. last year. Laced with cesium and strontium thanks to the radioactivity released by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, forest produce (including berries and mushrooms) is more difficult to track than farm produce, but the inspectors apparently manage to keep on top of it, with one exception: Old babushkas who sell illegal produce from the sides of streets and who city officials are hesitant to crack down on."

Comments

Also...

[floydigus]

Eggs don't bounce.
There are no bones in a jelly fish.

Re:Risotto ai funghi

[ceejayoz]

Quite a lot of plants and animals can be sued as bioindicators

Lets hope they've got good lawyers.

Bananas are radioactive too!

[helix400]

Ever heard that Bananas are a great source of Potassium? Well, that means bananas are also radioactive. Since bananas have has high levels of Potassiam, and since one of Potassium's common isotopes is radioactive...Bingo! Radioactive fruit!

I didn't believe it at first, until we left our physics class, ran down to the cafeteria, grabbed a banana, peeled it, and stuck a gieger counter to it. Sure enough, it had double the amount of normal background radiation!

Although its only alpha radiation (the least harmful of the three), its still fun to tell environmentalists that they get nuked more every year from bananas than they do from nuclear power plants.