LOS ANGELES (AP) - So now Japan's radioactive fallout is showing up in milk on the U.S. West Coast. Not to worry, though. It turns out that traces of radioactivity are in many foods we eat, the air we breathe and the water we swim in.
Based on current radiation levels leaking from the stricken Japanese nuclear plant, experts say it's very unlikely that health problems will develop in the United States and other places far from Japan.
"This amount of radiation is tiny, tiny, tiny compared to what you get from natural sources every day," said John Moulder, a professor of radiation oncology at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee who studies the effects of radiation exposure.
That radioactive fallout is turning up in food and water is hardly a surprise. Very low levels of radiation in the air connected to the Japanese plant have shown up coast to coast in the U.S., as well as in Iceland, Britain and Germany.
Most of the radioactive material disperses in the atmosphere, but some falls to the ground.
Radioactive iodine was found in the milk in California and Washington state, most likely after a cow ate tainted grass or drank puddles of rainwater containing it. Iodine-131, the type that was found, is short-lived and decays fairly quickly, becoming harmless.
Since this type of iodine is manmade, it isn't normally found in the environment. But we're exposed to natural sources of radiation every day - most of it from radon in the air and, to a lesser extent, from cosmic rays.
Foods we eat also contain low levels of naturally occurring radioactivity, including bananas, carrots and red meat. Even beer has it.
"Once you understand that we swim in this low-level sea of radiation, then it's just a numbers game," said Mike Payne of the Western Institute for Food Safety and Security at the University of California, Davis.