Angel Ronin Toshokan Reports 8: This substance is illegal in all consumer products. Cesium 137 = Rat Poison. Due to the poison, Kroger is involved in a recall of frozen shrimp products sold at its stores due to possible radioactive contamination from Cesium-137. The recall includes various brands such as Kroger, Kroger Mercado, and AquaStar, with specific UPCs and lot codes listed by the FDA. The recalled shrimp were sold between June 12 and September 17, 2025, and customers should not eat or serve them. This is a very serious environmental and public health emergency. Cesium-137 ($^{137}$Cs) is a dangerous radioactive isotope, and its presence in a river requires immediate action from specialized authorities. You cannot decontaminate the river yourself. This is a highly complex, hazardous, and large-scale operation that requires government agencies and environmental experts.

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 This substance  is illegal in all consumer products.


Cesium 137 = Rat Poison 

Due to the poison, Kroger is involved in a recall of frozen shrimp products sold at its stores due to possible radioactive contamination from Cesium-137. The recall includes various brands such as Kroger, Kroger Mercado, and AquaStar, with specific UPCs and lot codes listed by the FDA. The recalled shrimp were sold between June 12 and September 17, 2025, and customers should not eat or serve them. 



This is a very serious environmental and public health emergency. Cesium-137 ($^{137}$Cs) is a dangerous radioactive isotope, and its presence in a river requires immediate action from specialized authorities.




You cannot decontaminate the river yourself. This is a highly complex, hazardous, and large-scale operation that requires government agencies and environmental experts.

🛑 Immediate Steps You Must Take

  1. Stop All Contact: Ensure no one (including pets) drinks, swims in, fishes from, or uses the river water for any purpose (like irrigation).

  2. Report It Immediately: Contact your regional, state, or national environmental protection agency right now.

    • Also, notify your local public health department.

    • If you are in the United States, contact the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or your state's Department of Environmental Quality.

    • If you are in Canada, contact your provincial Ministry of the Environment and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC).

These agencies are responsible for handling radioactive contamination, testing the water and soil, identifying the source, warning the public, and managing the clean-up (remediation).

Why This Is So Difficult

"Total removal" of a radioactive contaminant from a flowing river is practically impossible. The goal of a professional remediation effort is to reduce the concentration to safe levels.

Here’s why it's such a challenge:

  • Binds to Sediment: Cesium-137 does not just stay dissolved in the water. It binds very strongly to fine soil particles, clay, and sediment on the riverbed. This means the riverbed itself is contaminated, not just the water flowing over it.

  • Constant Flow: New water is always moving downstream, carrying contaminated water and suspended sediment with it, potentially spreading the problem over a vast area.

  • Ecosystem Impact: The cesium is absorbed by plants, insects, fish, and other wildlife, moving it into the food chain.

How Professionals Handle Decontamination

Specialized teams use several methods, often in combination, to manage and reduce the contamination.

  1. Containing the Source: The first priority is to find and stop the source of the contamination so no more Cesium-137 enters the river.

  2. Dredging: The most common method for the riverbed is dredging. This involves physically removing the contaminated sediment from the bottom of the river. This is extremely expensive, disruptive to the river's ecosystem, and creates a new problem: a large amount of radioactive waste that must be safely stored in a specialized facility.

  3. Water Filtration: In some specific, localized areas (like a reservoir fed by the river), it might be possible to filter the water using systems like ion exchange or special absorbing materials (like Prussian Blue) that are known to trap cesium. This is not feasible for an entire flowing river.

  4. Phytoremediation: In some cases, specific plants (like sunflowers or willows) can be used over long periods to absorb cesium from contaminated soil on the riverbanks. The plants are then harvested and treated as radioactive waste.

Again, please contact your environmental authorities immediately. This is the most important action you can take to protect yourself and your community.

Would you like help finding the contact information for the environmental protection agency in your area?

Prussian blue is a chemical compound that is famous for two very different reasons: as one of the most important blue pigments in art and as a medical antidote for specific types of poisoning.1

Its chemical name is iron(III) hexacyanoferrate(II), and its formula is 2$Fe_4[Fe(CN)_6]_3$.3

Here is a breakdown of its two main uses:

1. As a Pigment

This is its most common and well-known use.

  • Historical Importance: It was the first modern synthetic pigment, accidentally created in Berlin around 1706.4

  • Art: It became incredibly popular with artists due to its deep, strong, and relatively lightfast blue.5 It was used extensively in famous paintings, such as Van Gogh's Starry Night and Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa.6

  • Other Uses: It was traditionally used to make blueprints (which is where the name comes from), blue inks, and textile dyes.7

2. As a Medical Antidote (The Connection to Cesium-137)8

This is the context from our previous conversation. In this form, it is a specific, pharmaceutical-grade capsule (often sold under the brand name Radiogardase®) prescribed by a doctor. This is NOT the same as eating the art pigment.

  • What it Does: It is a critical antidote used to treat internal contamination with radioactive Cesium-137 ($^{137}$Cs) and poisoning by the heavy metal thallium.9

  • How it Works: Prussian blue works through ion exchange.10

    1. A person swallows the capsule. The Prussian blue material is not absorbed by the body. It passes straight through the digestive system.

    2. As it travels, it has a crystal structure that is extremely effective at trapping and binding to cesium and thallium ions.11

    3. It "grabs" these radioactive or toxic particles from the gut, preventing them from being reabsorbed into the bloodstream.

    4. The Prussian blue, now carrying the trapped cesium, exits the body in the feces.

This process significantly speeds up the removal of the dangerous material from the body, reducing the total amount of radiation a person absorbs and lowering the risk of long-term health damage.

Do you have any more questions about the properties of Cesium-137 or the remediation process?

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