METAL pollution can cut radioactive contamination, say researchers in Finland
and Norway. They found that topsoil heavily polluted with copper and nickel from
a smelter on Russia’s Kola peninsula contains half the levels of caesium-137
found in unpolluted soil in Lapland.
After weapons tests in the 1960s, caesium-137 was deposited worldwide. The
smelter metals are thought to displace it from topsoil, so it leaches into the
soil beneath where it is less likely to be taken up by plants (Journal of
Environmental Radioactivity, vol 52, p 17).
