Dr. Bin Mori is a professor emeritus at University of Tokyo, Faculty of Agriculture. Since the beginning of the Fukushima nuclear crisis on March 11, the professor has been writing his blog focusing on the effect of radiation in plants and remediation of agricultural land.I have featured his autoradiographs of dandelion and horsetail on my blog before.In his post on October 30, Professor Mori wrote about his discovery, probably the world first, he made in spiders (Nephila clavata) he caught in Iitate-mura, Fukushima Prefecture, where the villagers were forced to evacuate after being designated as "planned evacuation zone". The spiders, he found, had radioactive silver (Ag-110m) at 1,000 times the concentration in the environment.The following is my translation of Dr. Mori's October 30 blog post, with his express permission:
#Radiation in Japan: Spiders in Iitate-mura Concentrating Radioactive Silver 1,000 Time... - 0 views
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Since it was difficult to collect plants in the rain in Iitate-mura, I caught instead "nephila clavatas" in the bamboo groves and cedar forest.
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I don't know whether the spiders eat dirt itself, but I thought they may have concentrated radioactive cesium in their bodies as they were at the top of the food chain in the forest, eating butterflies, horseflies, and drone beetles that they caught in their webs.
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