Radioactivity still shows up in Switzerland

Thirty years after the Soviet nuclear disaster, traces of radioactive elements from Chernobyl are still being registered in Switzerland, especially south of the Alps in Ticino. Are these contaminants still a risk to public health?    “Memories fade quicker than caesium-137,” which has a half-life of 30 years, says Christophe Murith, head of the radiological risk section of the Federal Office of Public Health. Yet the momentous events of spring 1986 are still vivid in his own memory. He was in the front line when the poisonous cloud from Chernobyl reached northern and central Europe and Switzerland.  “It was the Swedes who warned us: they had noticed an anomalous spike in radioactivity,” recalls Murith, who at the time worked for the laboratory of the Federal Commission for Radiological Protection.  “I had just finished my thesis and I was experimenting with a technique of spectroscopy. All of a sudden I found myself doing real measurements out in the ...