THE nuclear menace is rearing its head once again.
First, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine gave rise to fears of both countries’ nuclear reactors being damaged, deployment of battlefield nukes, Russia-NATO nuclear confrontation, and, more recently, even Zelensky seeking his own nukes.
During the Gaza war, Iran reportedly achieved nuclear latent status, meaning the ability to build a bomb on short notice and hovered on the brink of war with already nuclear-armed Israel.
Now, recent tensions between India and Pakistan brought the danger of nuclear war closer to reality in our region as well.
As such, for the first time since the Cold War, nuclear hazards have resurfaced as a major global concern—especially the most profound threat of all: fallout.
Radioactive fallout is terribly serious because it can contaminate environments with severe health hazards for ages.
That makes it imperative to understand how radioisotopes interact with the biosphere, hydrology, atmosphere, and geology of our Earth.
An immense amount of research into this subject commenced after 1945 and resulted in publication in 1962 by the US Department of Agriculture of “Protection of Food and Agriculture Against Nuclear Attack: A Guide for Agricultural Leaders”.
Even after 62 years, it remains a definitive guide to environmental radioactivity.
But experiencing tragedy is the most effective way to learn, which is where 1986’s Chernobyl explosion is useful.
Unless something terrible happened by the time you’re reading this, it is the biggest radiological disaster to date (bigger than Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even, in terms of scale of the hazard).
Chernobyl’s fallout spread across Europe.
Ever since, scientists have been monitoring exposed ecosystems.
Over the decades, they observed radiation levels in wild animals dropping as radioisotopes cleared out of their habitats.
There was one strange exception, however: wild boars, which retain constant levels of radioisotopes in their bodies, especially Cesium-137, to this day.
This was a huge scientific mystery which scientists only recently cracked.
Over time, it turns out, radiation from not only Chernobyl but also early Soviet nuclear tests drained from soil into groundwater deposits too deep for plant roots to reach.
But fungal roots, known as mycelial webs, are deep enough hence mushrooms and truffles have been sucking up Cesium-137.
Only one animal habitually eats these items; the wild boar.
In the end, even as European ecosystems decontaminated themselves, three reservoirs of radiation remained, groundwater, fungi, and wild boars (all mostly around mountain foothills of Bavaria and Austria where precipitation rates are high).
This is also representative of how they interact with any kind of pollution.
The very reason that Judaism and Islam forbid eating pork is likely that swine tend to eat things other animals don’t, things that are literally unclean.
Swine happily eat excrement, for example, almost unheard of in the animal kingdom.
This is what nature reserved for them.
Similarly, most animals probably avoid eating fungi because fungi also harbour contaminants like heavy metals, which they excel at absorbing from their surroundings.
Plants don’t seem to be as good at doing the same thing, and maybe the extensive biomass they build out of carbon dilutes contaminants.
(Incidentally, I once read in a yoga guidebook to avoid eating mushrooms “as they grow in darkness. ” So this prohibition also exists in some cultural circles.)
What about groundwater?
We generally think of this resource as reliably clean, but that is true only for highly filtered deep aquifers.
Shallow groundwater is indeed prone to pollution, so much so that toilet and sewer systems were invented to keep faecal pathogens out of drinking wells.
So we can see that reservoirs exist in nature where pollutants accumulate.
Another good example are estuarine bivalves, they being filter feeders (hence the Old Testament’s Leviticus banning shellfish consumption).
Big fish that eat small fish also fall victim to this due to biomagnification.
Chernobyl raised plenty of concerns about sea life and radiation, as did Fukushima Daiichi.
Remember, the ocean is where rainwater carrying radioisotopes ultimately goes.
What we’ve learned here is just a glimpse into the vast possibilities of radioecology.
Harmful contaminants are always out there and the world’s ecosystems have ways of managing them, as long as we watch out for those contaminant concentrations.
Should a nuclear catastrophe occur with tremendous fallout, it would be the biggest test humans ever witness of nature’s ability to manage pollution.
Knowing how things would proceed in such a scenario will help us work to ensure the safest possible existence for life in the environment that continues after the worst happens.
—The writer is an environmental journalist and director at Pakistan’s People-Led Disaster Management (PPLDM).
