Traces of Chernobyl’s Fallout Found in L.A.

Minute amounts of radioactivity from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union were reported in the air around Los Angeles Wednesday and in samples taken during the last two weeks in other parts of California.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said traces of iodine-131--less than 1.6 picocuries per cubic meter--were detected in Los Angeles Wednesday.

A spokeswoman for the state Department of Health Services said the agency’s monitors in Berkeley also measured radioactivity at “incredibly low levels” that posed no threat to public health.

Stephanie Thomas said the state’s instruments detected .69 picocuries of radioactivity per cubic meter of air in Berkeley on Sunday, .42 on Monday and .23 on Wednesday. The state found no radioactivity in samples taken in Los Angeles, Orange or San Diego counties during the same period. It and the EPA have different monitoring sites.

Thomas said state physicists believe the earlier, slightly higher readings were prompted by radioactivity that drifted to ground level from the jet stream, where it had moved around the Earth from the Soviet Ukraine at a relatively rapid pace. The more recent readings, dropping each day, are probably from radioactivity from air at lower levels that took longer to reach California, he said.

Besides iodine, the monitors picked up traces of cesium, rubidium and barium, which are not normally found in the atmosphere.

Instruments used by the physics department at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, measured even smaller levels over an eight-day period in and around San Luis Obispo.

The state also found iodine-131 in milk samples taken from Humboldt County Monday, but at minute levels not considered dangerous to humans.