RADIOISOTOPES

Mushrooms are known to accumulate radiocaesium, however, their radiocaesium concentrations would depend on the mushroom species and their growing environments. It is, however, difficult to evaluate the ability to absorb radiocaesium by mushroom species now by simply using the radiocaesium concentrations in wild mushrooms because radiocaesium depositions on the land surface in the eastern Japan differs several orders of magnitude from region to region due to the TEPCO’s Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant Accident. In this study, therefore, we focused on global fallout ¹³⁷Cs concentration data in wild mushrooms. Using the data, we ranked 43 wild mushroom species those potentially contained radiocaesium from low to high concentrations. We successfully estimated some low concentration wild mushroom species and these species were indeed significantly low in radiocaesium concentrations. The estimated Cs concentration ranking could provide a useful information to restart wild mushroom collection.