In the nearly 50 collected meat samples, the team found 88 percent of the samples were above Germany’s regulatory limits for radioactive cesium in food.
Calculating the ratio of cesium isotopes in the samples, they found that nuclear weapons testing accounted for 10 to 68 percent of the contamination.
While cesium from both the nuclear weapons testing and the Chernobyl accident spread through the soil, Steinhauser said, the mushrooms appear to have fully absorbed the source from the nuclear weapons testing so far. Cesium seeps very slowly through the soil, sometimes only one millimeter per year, he said. Deer truffles, located between 20 and 40 centimeters, have already absorbed the “older” cesium from six decades ago.
Radiochemist Ralf Sudowe, who was not involved in the research, said some of the study’s results were “really surprising” to him. He said it has always been assumed that the radiocesium stems from the most recent release of radioactive fallout that affected the area, such as the Chernobyl accident in the case of Europe, but this study upends that assumption.
But Abergel, an associate professor at University of California, Berkeley, said the study was interesting because it characterized and highlighted regional disparities in the contamination. Some of those differences may be because of localized factors, such as winds, animal migration or subsurface water flow.
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