Fact Sheet 9 Food
Advice on Contaminated Food
If radioactive substances are released during a nuclear accident, they can contaminate food. Not all food will be affected. Only exposed foods such as crops in fields, milk from cows grazing in the area or fish from rivers, will be contaminated. Packaged foods from shops, or foods already in the home prior to the accident, will be safe to eat. Following a safety-first policy, precautionary advice will be issued to cover any area where permitted levels of radioactivity in food may be exceeded. Precautionary advice on what foods may be unsafe will be issued by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) as soon as possible, to minimise the risk of people eating this food and being exposed to the radioactivity. This may be followed by a statutory food restriction order under the Food and Environment Protection Act 1985 (FEPA), which will specify what foods or agricultural activities are subject to legal restriction within a defined area. The area affected by FSA advice and food restrictions may be large. It will probably exceed any areas subject to other countermeasures such as evacuation or sheltering, which are used to avoid people breathing in radioactivity or receiving direct radiation from a cloud of contamination while it is overhead. If food is contaminated, there is potential for it to be eaten for a long time after the cloud has left. The permitted levels of radioactivity in food are set at a very low level to take this into account, resulting in a large area being affected.
Permitted Levels of Radioactivity in Food
Most foods are naturally radioactive. It is therefore impractical to talk to about food being free of radioactivity. The levels of radioactivity permitted in food following a nuclear accident are laid down by the European Union. These Maximum Permitted Levels become law after an accident. The Maximum Permitted Levels are based on the assumption that any affected food makes up a significant part of someone’s diet for an indefinite period. They therefore represent a high degree of public protection.
Fact Sheet 9 Food
Restricted food should not be used but, if a small amount is eaten inadvertently, there is no need for alarm. Eating large amounts of food containing radioactivity at the Maximum Permitted Levels would result in a radiation dose within the range of doses received from natural background radiation.
Precautionary Advice and Legal Restrictions
Precautionary advice will normally be given in the early stages of an emergency, when there would be uncertainty as to the precise area affected. Because of the need for a safety-first approach, advice may cover a larger area than that subsequently subjected to legal restrictions. Radioactivity will take time to accumulate in some foodstuffs, up to a few days. Precautionary advice will cover any area where it is believed that Maximum Permitted Levels might be exceeded in the future. When measurements of radioactivity levels in crops and other materials become available, a FEPA order will be imposed to prevent any food exceeding the Maximum Permitted Levels entering the food chain.