Instead, let’s pretend that you’re actually just eating the tea, thereby consuming 100% of the radioactive material present, as you would when you make matcha. Let’s really shake it up! When you steep dry tea leaves, very little radioactive material would enter your cup only between 2% and 10%, depending on the study and conditions you reference. This translates to 12 grams of tea, or 1.2 Bq, per day. Then, let’s say you drink three cups of tea a day for a whole year, using an average of 4 grams of tea per cup. (Remember that this is still 1/12 the United State’s limit on imports.) Let’s say that you’ve purchased a Japanese tea that has registered the maximum legal export limit in Japan = 100 Bq / Kilo. Let’s perform a thought experiment based on a worst-case scenario: All of these numbers and concepts can be abstract, so I’d like to provide context. If you’re concerned, simply ask!įinally, there’s the idea of “safe” when it comes to radiation. Resources are available online to research what levels of radiation are being reported in Japanese foodstuffs and tea, either from governmental bodies or from the tea distributors themselves. Numerous other brands do this, and are very open about the testing. For instance, Aiya, a huge Japanese brand primarily selling matcha, releases monthly reports of radiation testing conducted on their tea, a process that certainly doesn’t come cheap.
Provided these organizations are doing their jobs, many tea companies have taken up the mantle of preventative concern themselves. They also consult the EPA’s environmental radiation monitoring program (RadNet), and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who keep a fairly regular (weekly to bi-weekly) journal of what’s happening in Japan. The FDA has worked on this issue extensively, coordinating with Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare (MHLW), and issues reminders to the public that it has found no cause for concern among any imported foods from Japan and that the import standards are considered safe. Though this seems high (by comparison), we are far from negligent in our duties. You might be wondering, as a means of comparison, how much does the USA allow in our imports? Even though Canada and the International Codex allow a maximum of 1000 Bq / Kg, the United States tops the list with a maximum of 1200 Bq / Kg, or 12 times Japan’s standard! After the disaster, Japan reformed their rules to only allow 100 Bq / Kg, the lowest range of any country on Earth. It’s worth noting that the exclusion zone around the power plant is only 30 km (18 miles), and over the last five and a half years, the Japanese government has been systematically removing a layer of topsoil, significantly reducing the ambient background radiation.īefore Fukushima, Japan allowed food exports to register under 500 Bq / Kg, the same limit as the European Union. Another 30% is grown on a completely different island, Kyushu, where you have the infamous tea growing Prefectures Fukuoka and Kagoshima, the latter of which is as far away from Fukushima as New York City is from Atlanta. The distance from Fukushima to Shizuoka Prefecture, where 40% of all Japanese tea is grown, is 360 km (224 miles), or just a bit further than the distance from New York City to Washington D.C. Thankfully, radiation doesn’t travel far unless carried by a radioactive material, and the tea growing regions of Japan are a significant distance from Fukushima. While this may be true for many producers, this interpretation isn’t entirely accurate, for reasons that will soon become apparent. Five and half years after the Tohoku earthquake and subsequent meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant in Japan, a question still lingers for some tea enthusiasts: Is Japanese tea safe to drink?įirstly, by “safe to drink”, the layman might think this means, “the tea is absent from radioactive particles”.
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