What has tusks, bristly hair, and is contaminated with dangerous levels of radiation? Visit Germany’s Bavarian mountain towns and you just may find out. The wild boars (Sus scrofa) that snuffle through the region’s forests are so radioactive that the country has ruled them unsafe to eat—but why these animals are so contaminated has proved a puzzle. In a new study out today in Environmental Science & Technology, scientists report that at least some of the radioactive elements in their bodies are the result of fallout from atomic bombs that detonated in our atmosphere more than 60 years ago.
The environmental and health consequences of nuclear weapons testing have so far been “understudied and largely forgotten,” says James Kaste, a geochemist at the College of William & Mary who was not involved in the study. “This is one of the ultimate case studies showing how legacy soil pollution can haunt generations to come.”
The enduring radioactivity of Bavaria’s boars has traditionally been blamed on the 1986 meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear power reactor, some 1300 kilometers away. Immediately after the disaster, radioactive fallout spread over the environment, leaving forest animals in Bavaria and elsewhere contaminated with radioactive cesium. Levels of radioactivity in most creatures decreased over the following years—but not so for the Bavarian boars. Scientists believe that’s because of the animals’ penchant for truffle mushrooms. As rainfall slowly carries radioactive particles down through the soil, they accumulate in the tasty fungi, which are eventually rooted up by the hungry boars.