In a set of papers published Thursday in the Journal of Heredity, a U.S. publication, Japanese and U.S. scientists warned that radioactive materials released from by the core meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant could have caused abnormalities in the genes of nearby birds and insects.
One of the experts, Timothy Mousseau of the University of South Carolina, called for wide-ranging and long-term research on ecosystems, such as a genetic-level analysis, drawing a comparison with what happened to such species after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in present-day Ukraine.
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