Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) wrote a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration re: Fukushima

[PearliePoo2]

His letter was addressed to U. S. FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg and posed very significant and pointed questions regarding radiation contamination of the ocean's seafood and the FDA's response to this disaster.
He gave her a June 22nd deadline to get back to him with answers.
Although I am not a Massachusetts resident, (coastal Washington State) I'm going to write to him to express my concern and my interest in the FDA's response.
A good part of my diet is seafood and with the recent disclosure of contaminated Blue-fin tuna, I want to know what the FDA is doing about our food safety.

Read his letter here:
http://markey.house.gov/sites/markey.house.gov/files/documents/06-01-12%20letter%20to%20FDA%20re%20seafood%20safety%20in%20Pacific%20Ocean_radiation%20FINAL.pdf

[YellowRubberDuckie]

1. There is less radiation in Blue Fin Tuna than there is in a banana.

[PearliePoo2]

2. The 15 Blue-fin tuna were caught and tested in August of last year.

All of them were positive for cesium-134 and Cesium-137.
This summer the tests will be expanded to other sea-life in addition to the newly arriving Blue-fin to the California coast.
No one knows yet what to expect in the levels of radiation. They may contain more or they might be radiation free.
The results should be revealed by this mid-summer.
Here's some quotes from the researchers:

"Unlike some other compounds, radioactive cesium does not quickly sink to the sea bottom but remains dispersed in the water column, from the surface to the ocean floor.
Fish can swim right through it, ingesting it through their gills, by taking in seawater or by eating organisms that have already taken it in.
Neither [of the scientists who tested the fish] thought they were likely to find cesium at all, they said. And since the fish tested were born about a year before the disaster, “This year’s fish are going to be really interesting,” Madigan said.

“There were fish born around the time of the accident, and those are the ones showing up in California right now,” he said. “Those have been, for the most part, swimming around in those contaminated waters their whole lives.”

In other words, the 15 fish tested were only exposed to radiation for a short time. But blue-fin arriving in California now will have been exposed to the Fukushima radiation for much longer.
The real test of how radioactivity affects tuna populations comes this summer when researchers planned to repeat the study with a larger number of samples. Blue-fin tuna that journeyed last year were exposed to radiation for about a month. The upcoming travelers have been swimming in radioactive waters for a longer period. How this will affect concentrations of contamination remains to be seen.
The fish that will be arriving around now, and in the coming months, to California waters may be carrying considerably more radioactivity and if so they may possibly be a public health hazard.

Rubberduckie...what amounts has your research revealed (Blue-fin tuna versus bananas)?
Please cite your study and the similarities of Fukushima's Cesium 134/137 and naturally occurring Potassium 40 in bananas.