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Evacuations continued for months as Japan struggled to find housing for a large population exposed to radioactive iodine 131, cesium 134 and cesium 137.

“Thallium 201 — that’s usually used for doing heart scans. If I picked up Iodine 131, my first thought would be thyroid cancer.”

Of course, in such an exchange, not everyone would be killed by the blast and the firestorm, the radiation and the fallout—although fallout does last for a longish time: 90 percent of the strontium 90 will decay in 96 years; 90 percent of the cesium 137, in 100 years; 90 percent of the iodine 131 in only a month.

Iodine 131 has a half life of about eight days.

Iodine 131, a fission product, began showing up in mothers’ milk.