The Pacific = The New Lake Springfield?

Radioactive water continues to gush into the Pacific from Japan's damaged nuclear reactors, and no one really knows what's going to happen. The "experts" say there's little chance of "significant" health risks to seafood-eaters such as myself, but I don't buy it. (Or any Pacific seafood anymore.)

I wonder if the Pacific Ocean is being turned into a newer, larger version of Lake Springfield. (As in the river that runs past the nuclear plant in The Simpsons, helloooo!) Will we, like Bart, soon be seeing three-eyed fish? And if so, will we be seeing them at the dinner table? I can see it now: "Tonight's special, miso-glazed Blinky on a bed of sautéed, glow-in-the-dark kombu, nori and wakame..."

"Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass., said readings for radioactive iodine and cesium show a thousand-fold drop from the shore to monitors about 19 miles offshore," reports HuffPo. Nice of them to test 19 miles offshore. Show me safe readings sourced one mile away, and I'll feel a lot better.

The article continues: "He said radioactive doses in seafood may turn out to be detectable but probably won't be a significant health hazard. They'd probably be less of a concern than what people could get from land-based sources like drinking water or eating produce, he said..."

I like how he trumpets the quality of drinking water and pesticide-laden produce as the new gold standard. The real irony, however, is that HuffPo published a story about contaminated water today, too—and has a link to that story at the top of the everything-is-OK-the-ocean-is-safe story. The water safety story explains how officials have known about "worrisome levels of a suspected carcinogen" (chromium-6, the Erin Brokovich cancer-causer) in tap water in 31 major U.S. cities since 2004, yet no one raised any red flags. Awesome!

Don't you feel safe? I sure do!

Back to Japan, though, as HuffPo offers more reassurance:

"Igor Linkov, an adjunct professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, also said he did not expect any major impact on ocean wildlife or people who eat seafood. He agreed that animals near the plant may be affected. It's not clear in what way, because the levels of radiation isn't well known, he said. In any case, fish would probably escape such an effect because unlike immobile species such as oysters, they move around and so would not get a continuous exposure..."

Still, radioactive water and nuclear waste finding its way into the ocean are nothing new. European countries have been using the ocean floor as a dumping ground for it's nuclear trash for years—the coast off Somalia is a particular favorite, apparently—and the Italian mafia doesn't bother going that far to dispose of entire ships full of nuclear junk, according to EcoDelMar.org.

Gross.

I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm willing to bet that all of this radioactive water and the impact on sea creatures is going to make for some interesting sea monster movies... possibly based on true stories.