'Severe abnormalities' found in Fukushima butterflies

[Eugene]

Source: BBC

13 August 2012 Last updated at 15:17 GMT

'Severe abnormalities' found in Fukushima butterflies

By Nick Crumpton
BBC News

Exposure to radioactive material released into the environment has caused mutations in butterflies found in Japan, a study suggests.

Scientists found an increase in leg, antennae and wing shape mutations among butterflies collected following the 2011 Fukushima accident.

The link between the mutations and the radioactive material was shown by laboratory experiments, they report.

The work has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

[font size=1]-snip-[/font]

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19245818

[eShirl]

1. damn..

[Raster]

2. And we thought "Mothra" was just science fiction.

[RobertEarl]

3. From what i read - no link

These butterflies were found many miles from the evacuation zone.

Insects like this, because of their short life spans, are the first to mutate.

What's next?

[FBaggins]

4. Some notes from Ex-SKF

It sounds scary, but what the researcher failed to mention but others in Japan who immediately started dissecting the paper have been saying is this:

•These particular butterflies' original, natural habitat is southern, warmer locales such as Okinawa, and Kyushu, Shikoku.

•These butterflies have been known to have a lot of mutations as it migrates ever northward, far outside their natural habitat, LONG BEFORE the Fukushima accident, and it has been well studied and the results published

•Why did these researchers pick this particular species prone to mutations if they really wanted to isolate the effect of radiation?

Professor Joji Otaki himself has written a paper on the topic of mutation of this particular species, and has attributed the mutation to colder temperatures. But now, scanning through the paper, I see that he and his fellow researchers attribute physiological and genetic mutations of this butterfly species to exposure to artificial radiation from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, without proving that it is indeed the radiation from Fukushima that have caused genetic mutation. The researchers just say so in the paper, as if that's what everybody knows.

As controls, they used the butterflies in the southern, warmer natural habitat where the butterflies are more genetically stable, and compare them with the butterflies they caught in the northern regions, mostly in Fukushima Prefecture and Ibaraki Prefecture, where wide variations and mutations had already been observed prior to the nuclear accident.

Does that make sense? Particularly when Professor Otaki had already amassed the data of this species in northern regions as far north as Aomori Prefecture? Why didn't they compare the butterflies caught in Fukushima with the butterflies in Aomori, which hardly had radiation contamination from the Fukushima accident?


http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2012/08/butterfly-mutations-caused-by-fukushima.html