From time to time, the sugar desert located in North Africa raises the storm and spreads the clouds of dust throughout Europe and other parts of the world. It is curious and anxious that this sand still carries radioactive isotopes from the tests of atomic bombs from the times of cold water. But the new study showed that everything is not quite as previously believed, writes iflscience.

In a new study, a team from the Laboratory of Sciences of Climate and the Environment in France focused on understanding whether the significant amounts of radioactive isotopes formed as a result of these tests were transferred to Western Europe during a powerful dust event in Sahara in March 2022. The results indicate that radiation is still preserved in dust, which has reached Europe three years ago. But there was something curious: the radiation was not from the source that everyone expected.

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In the period from 1960 to 1966, France experienced in Algerian Sahara, which until 1962 was under colonial control. Researchers note that this part of the desert was then considered an ideal place for testing nuclear weapons, as it was extensive and sparsely populated.

Despite the statements that the bombs will be dropped in a deserted region, thousands of local residents and French soldiers were exposed to radiation. Open data indicate that up to 60,000 Algerians suffered from explosions, but the French Ministry of Defense claims that there were half as many injured - about 27,000 people.

According to the leading author of the study by the Yangtsyzze Xu-Yana, he and his colleagues discovered something curious: radioactive isotopes present in the dust from the sugar that reached Europe in 2022 arose as a result of nuclear tests, but not France, as previously believed, but the United States and the United States and the United States and the United States.

Note that the United States and the USSR did not conduct tests in Sahara, but their extensive tests during the Cold War left an extensive radioactive mark - it reached the desert. The authors of the study note that this is due to the fact that the capacity of the detonation of French tests is only 0.02% of the total capacity of detonation of the USSR and the United States from 1950 to 1970.

It is known that most of the tests of nuclear weapons of the United States and the USSR were carried out at the same latitude of Southern Algeria, but their fragments could reach a height of 8,000 meters, and then scattered into huge territories.

The team came to such conclusions, having studied 53 sample of sugar dust, which reached Europe in 2022. Scientists analyzed and found that radioactive dust arose in the reggen region in Algeria, however, plutonium levels in it do not correspond to low isotopic ratios, below 0.07, from nuclear trials of France. Instead, with a median ratio of 0.187, the samples coincided with American and Soviet test signatures.

Fortunately for Europeans, the levels of radiation of sugar dust reaching Europe are significantly lower than thresholds of the security of the European Union. Scientists claim that they can hardly be higher than the background radiation detected in the soil. According to Suy-Yana, in fact, the risk is very insignificant.

Note that in Europe the surface of the soil often has the same radioactivity as the dust that arrived from the Sahara in 2022.

Previously, Focus wrote that they travel 8,000 km like dust and sand.