Nuclear weapons testing cause of radioactivity in wild boars, study says

autotldr Bot , 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

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A new study has found that nuclear weapons tests during the Cold War are a major cause of high levels of radioactivity in central Europe’s wild boar population.

The radioactivity found in wild boars has previously been blamed on the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

But the new research concludes that earlier nuclear weapons testing in the 1960s is a significant cause.

After testing meat from 48 boars in Germany’s state of Bavaria, scientists from Vienna’s University of Technology and Leibniz University of Hannover found that their radioactivity is to a significant degree caused by older, Cold War nuclear bomb blasts which are still affecting the soil in the area.

Writing in the Environmental Science and Technology journal, the scientists say that radioactive caesium from the tests have sunk into the earth, contaminating deer truffles - the food favoured by wild boars, who dig into the soil to find them.

The boars’ continued contamination threatens the Bavarian forests themselves, the study says: as the animals are not shot for their meat, their populations are growing unsustainably.

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