Strontium In Hilo Hi Milk

A radioactive isotope of strontium has been detected in American milk for the first time since Japan’s nuclear disaster—in a sample from Hilo, Hawaii—the Environmental Protection Agency revealed yesterday.

“We have completed our first strontium milk sample analysis and found trace amounts of strontium-89 in a milk sample from Hilo, Hawaii. The level was approximately 27,000 times below the Derived Intervention Level set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration,” EPA said in a statement emailed to me yesterday afternoon. EPA posted the test result at epa.gov in a pdf.

In fact, the FDA has no Derived Intervention Level for Strontium-89. See FDA statement at the bottom of this post.