FRANKLIN, Vt. -
Ice fishermen are busy on Lake Carmi in Franklin trying to reel in the big one. It's where Doug Bard and his wife have fished for more than five decades.
"It's a nice place to fish. You got nice walleye population, nice population of big slap perch, nice northerns," Doug Bard said.
There's also small mouth bass. And the Vermont Health Department says some of them tested positive for radioactivity last week. Scientists found small levels of cesium 137 and strontium 90.
"They didn't surprise me," Vt. Radiological Chief Bill Irwin said.
The level of cesium 137 and strontium 90 found in the fish in Lake Carmi are similar to the levels found in fish in the Connecticut River near Vermont Yankee.
"What we wanted to do was obtain samples from a body of water that was not affected by operations at a nuclear power plant," Irwin said.
Lake Carmi is in Franklin County-- 200 miles from Vermont Yankee.
When the discovery was made two years ago near the plant in Vernon, some blamed the radioactive material on the nuclear reactor. But all along the Vermont Health Department has maintained that all fish in Vermont have low levels of contamination. The source is from above ground nuclear testing around the world in the 1940s, 50s and 60s.
"It is in our environment simply because as it passed through the atmosphere, because it fell out with the rain and snow and other kinds of activities onto the soils, then it migrated into the soils into the sediments, into the water, into the food, including the fish we eat," Irwin said.
The health department says there is no danger in eating the fish either from Lake Carmi or the Connecticut River.
"These fish are very important to our diet, they are very nutritious, and in fact the radioactivity in these fish is similar to samples found all-around the world," Irwin said.
Bard and his wife aren't concerned. Each week, three or four meals consist of fish from Lake Carmi.
"Not a bit, I have been eating fish out of this pond for 50 years. Hasn't killed me yet," Bard said.
The health department also points out that similar levels of cesium 137 and strontium 90 are also found in humans. The health department says it plans to continue testing bodies of water across Vermont. They will also team up to conduct similar testing in New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York to better characterize the levels of radioactivity from natural sources.
