Here's Why Germany's Wild Boars are Mysteriously Radioactive

In Southern Germany, scientists had recently discovered that wild boars had high levels of radioactive cesium, making some unsafe to eat. Research showed that nuclear weapons tests from the mid-20th century were largely responsible for the high radioactivity. Both the weapons tests and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster continued to affect the boars due to their diet.

Georg Steinhauser, a co-author of the study and a radiochemist at the Vienna University of Technology in Austria, told The Washington Post , "My mind was blown when I realized how relevant this source of radioactive contamination still is."

To study the impact on wild boars, researchers analyzed meat samples from Bavaria, Germany, collected between 2019 and 2021. They found that contamination from nuclear tests accounted for 10 to 68 percent of the radioactive material in the samples. Knewz.com noted that contamination levels exceeded the safety limit by up to 25 times in most cases. Michael Fiederle, a radiation researcher at the University of Freiburg in Germany, told The New York Times , "The fact that radiation from those nuclear tests is still present, even when compared to Chernobyl, is noteworthy."

The surprising element here was that while contamination levels in other animals had decreased since Chernobyl, wild boars remained highly contaminated. This was likely due to their diet of deer truffles, which absorbed cesium from the soil, increasing radioactivity when consumed. Rebecca Abergel, a nuclear chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, told The Post , "I was not surprised by the findings. It has been known for decades that significant isotope contamination throughout the planet is a result of weapons contamination."

Caesium-137, a key component, had a half-life of about 30 years, meaning it lost its radioactivity relatively quickly. However, caesium-135, created during nuclear fission, was much more stable, with a half-life of over 2 million years. Scientists compared the amounts of these isotopes and analyzed cesium levels in 48 wild boar meat samples. They found that nuclear weapons testing had caused 12 to 68 percent of the dangerous contamination in the samples.

The researchers wrote, per Indy100 , "All samples exhibit signatures of mixing. Nuclear weapons fallout and [Chernobyl] have mixed in the Bavarian soil, the release maxima of which were about 20−30 years apart." They further added, "This study illustrates that strategic decisions to conduct atmospheric nuclear tests 60−80 years ago still impact remote natural environments, wildlife, and a human food source today."

According to the United Nations, between 1945 and 1996, over 2,000 nuclear bombs had been detonated worldwide, with about 500 of them exploding above ground. After an explosion, a strong upward draft carried radioactive material high into the atmosphere, where it spread out before eventually falling back to Earth. Although the study identified the source of the boars' radioactivity, it didn’t explain why the contamination remained so persistent in wild boars.

Steinhauser, told McClatchy News, per Miami Herald , "Vulnerable food items like European wild boars are rigorously monitored and thus safe. Apart from that, a one-time consumption of contaminated meat does not equate to unacceptable risk."