Morteratsch – In the alpine glaciers there are radioactive substances produced by nuclear tests and accidents such as cesium-137, americium-241 and bismuth-207: after being deposited on the soil together with the snow, they can be preserved for decades in the glaciers that molt and withdraw more and more each year. This is demonstrated by the recent measurements on the Morteratsch glacier, in the Swiss Alps, by a group of Italian researchers who used sediments called cryochonitis as detectors maps for ice analysis. Cryoconytic cups – small deposits of dark sediments found on ice all over the world – in addition to radioactive substances, absorb and concentrate heavy metals and metalloids such as zinc, arsenic and mercury. Fortunately, however, no immediate health risk was detected. The research was conducted by a group of scholars from the Department of Earth and Physics Sciences at the University of Milano-Bicocca, the National Institute of Nuclear Physics, the University of Genoa and the Laboratory for the Physics of Physics, Applied Nuclear Energy of the University of Pavia. Collaboration between researchers led to the publication of the study in Nature’s Scientific Reports magazine. (9colonne)
