Traces of nuclear bombs found in marine life at Earth's deepest spot: Study

Scientists have found traces of radioactive carbon -- released into the atmosphere from 20th-century nuclear bomb tests -- in marine organisms that inhabit the Mariana Trench, the deepest spot on Earth.

Organisms at the ocean surface have incorporated this "bomb carbon" into the molecules that make up their bodies since the late 1950s.
The study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, finds crustaceans in deep ocean trenches are feeding on organic matter from these organisms when it falls to the ocean floor.
The results show human pollution can quickly enter the food web and make its way to the deep ocean, researchers said.
"Although the oceanic circulation takes hundreds of years to bring water containing bomb carbon to the deepest trench, the food chain achieves this much faster," said Ning Wang, a geochemist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in China.
"There's a very strong interaction between the surface and the bottom, in terms of biologic systems, and human activities can affect the biosystems even down to 11,000 metres, so we need to be careful about our future behaviours," said Weidong Sun, a geochemist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Read More

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