Vegetables in northern coastal areas have been found to contain iodine-131, the Atomic Energy Council (AEC) said yesterday.
The council sampled vegetables grown in the region after finding iodine-131 in grass and leaves in the area on Wednesday. The council said the radiation fell in rain on Sunday and Monday.
Iodine-131 has a radioactive half life of about eight days.
The council said in a statement that it randomly sampled several vegetables grown in northern coastal areas yesterday, including gynura bicolors, Brazilian fireweeds and cherry belle radishes.
“The unwashed Brazilian fireweeds were the only vegetable found to contain radiation,” the council said. “The sample contains iodine-131 of 2.49Bq per kg, which is far lower than the government standard of 300Bq per kg.”
The council added that it detected no iodine-131 in the Brazilian fireweeds after they were washed.
The council said a person would accumulate 2 microsieverts of radiation if they consumed unwashed Brazilian fireweed for a year. It said a chest X-ray delivers 20 microsieverts, so a person would have to eat radiation-contaminated Brazilian fireweed for 10 years to ingest the same amount.
As there is concern that the nation’s reservoirs might be contaminated by radiation from Japan’s Fukushima Dai-chi Nuclear Power Plant, the council said the Water Resources Agency is closely monitoring water quality.
The AEC said it will meet officials at the Central Personnel Office to discuss the possibility of canceling work and classes if radiation level hits 2 microsieverts per hour.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
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