Radioactive boars roaming Fukushima
Radioactive boars roaming Fukushima: Forget about radiation for now, one of the other big problems stopping residents from returning to Japan’s towns vacated after the Fukushima nuclear crisis six years ago are wild boars, according to Reuters. The animals, known to attack people when enraged, descended from surrounding hills and forests into the vacated towns (runtime 01:32). "It is not really clear now which is the master of the town, people or wild boars," said Tamotsu Baba, mayor of the seaside town of Namie. The New York Times notes that this wild boar invasion is also affecting food, saying the wild boars “carry with them highly radioactive material.” Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura writes: “wild boar meat is a delicacy in northern Japan, but animals slaughtered since the disaster are too contaminated to eat. According to tests conducted by the Japanese government, some of the boars have shown levels of radioactive element cesium-137 that are 300 times higher than safety standards.” She adds “the city of Soma last year set up municipal incinerators specially designed to burn carcasses and filter out radioactive cesium.”