6,000 Miles of Ocean is Not Enough

Back when the powerful nations of the world - led by the U.S. - were testing their nuclear weapons by exploding them in the open air, the concept of "global fallout" was well known. I remember my mother carefully peeling all fruit and vegetables before we kids ate them, in order to remove the radioactive strontium 90 that settled out of of the atmosphere and concentrated under the skin of produce.

Nuclear tests went underground more than 45 years ago, and the fallout from Chernobyl seemed confined mostly to eastern Europe, but Fukushima has brought a blast from the past.

From Lawyers, Guns and Money:

This seems like a small sample size to me, but the scientists say it is statistically significant:

The recent CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report indicates that eight cities in the northwest U.S. (Boise ID, Seattle WA, Portland OR, plus the northern California cities of Santa Cruz, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and Berkeley) reported the following data on deaths among those younger than one year of age:

4 weeks ending March 19, 2011 – 37 deaths (avg. 9.25 per week)

10 weeks ending May 28, 2011 – 125 deaths (avg.12.50 per week)

This amounts to an increase of 35% (the total for the entire U.S. rose about 2.3%), and is statistically significant. Of further significance is that those dates include the four weeks before and the ten weeks after the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster. In 2001 the infant mortality was 6.834 per 1000 live births, increasing to 6.845 in 2007. All years from 2002 to 2007 were higher than the 2001 rate.

Unfortunately, organic growing techniques will not protect you from radioactive fallout.