Radiocarbon in food: a non-problem of health effects.

Recently it has come to our attention that a paper was published in this journal entitled "recycling greenhouse gas fossil fuel emissions into low radiocarbon food products to reduce human genetic damage" (Williams in Environ Chem Lett 5:197-202, 2007). In this article, it is argued that food grown in a greenhouse is healthier for people, when the greenhouse is fertilised with CO(2) prepared from fossil fuels. In this comment, however, we argue that the effect on human health is completely negligible.

Atmospheric radiocarbon calibration to 45,000 yr B.P.: late glacial fluctuations and cosmogenic isotope production

More than 250 carbon-14 accelerator mass spectrometry dates of terrestrial macrofossils from annually laminated sediments from Lake Suigetsu (Japan) provide a first atmospheric calibration for almost the total range of the radiocarbon method (45,000 years before the present). The results confirm the (recently revised) floating German pine chronology and are consistent with data from European and marine varved sediments, and combined uranium-thorium and carbon-14 dating of corals up to the Last Glacial Maximum. The data during the Glacial show large fluctuations in the atmospheric carbon-14 content, related to changes in global environment and in cosmogenic isotope production.