The Fallout of the reactor accident in Chernobyl also reached Germany almost 40 years ago and stressed nature with radioactive particles. To this day, there are traces of this contamination in the soils. The Federal Office for Radiation Protection has now published current measurements. A consumption of wild mushrooms collected in Germany is therefore harmless – provided that some rules are observed.
In 1986 there was a catastrophic accident in a nuclear power plant near the then Soviet place Tschornobyl (Russian Tschernobyl). This Super-Gau was the most severe reactor accident in history. The explosion of the reactor building was released at the time, including Caesium-137. Among other things, this arises in nuclear fission in nuclear power plants and does not occur naturally. After the accident, it was distributed with air currents over large parts of Europe. The floor in the southeast of Germany was also burdened with the radionuclide via clouds and rain.
Invisible traces of this radioactive contamination are available in nature to this day, almost 40 years after the accident. Because the half-life of Caesium-137 is about 30 years. This means that the material released in 1986 has only decomposed around 60 percent. Therefore, mushrooms from the forest can still contain radioactive cesium-137 from Tschornobyl. In addition, they contain radioactive cesium, which was released in nuclear weapons in the 20th century. The burden of the Fallout of Tschornobyl focuses primarily in the Bavarian Forest, on the edge of the Alps and in the Donaumoos southwest of Ingolstadt.
How much are the mushrooms in the forest contaminated?
Anyone who collects mushrooms can still encounter specimens in some areas of southern Germany that contain more than 600 Becquerel Caesium-137 per kilogram of fresh mass, as a current report by the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BFS) shows. This is the legal limit that fungi sold in EU countries must not exceed. Breeding mushrooms such as mushrooms, oysters and shiitake generally contain little Caesium-137. In wild species, however, the load can be significantly higher. The current report shows which of the 158 wild-growing dining mushroom types currently little, and which a lot of Caesium-137 contain.
The most radioactive contaminated is therefore bread -stubborn fungi, red -brown bread stop mushrooms and ivory snack bars. In the past three years, these species have had some measured values over 2,000 Becquerel per kilogram of fresh mass. This was followed by trumpet chants, chestnuts, silky knights, thick -leaved black artery and pale blue reddish knights, who often showed measured values over 1,000 Becquerel per kilogram. Hardly burdened with Caesium-137, on the other hand, the brown-scaly giant mushroom, the dark-fiber mushroom, the rabbit röhrling, the Judasohr, the giant porling and the city mushroom. These mushroom types showed less than five Becquerel Caesium-137 per kilogram of fresh mass.
(K) A reason to worry?
However, this is not one reason for concern for mushroom collectors if they only eat small amounts of the mushrooms. “If you consume yourself collected mushrooms in usual quantities, this is harmless from the perspective of radiation protection all over Germany,” says Inge Paulini from the BFS. “Because all main foods are almost unencumbered, it only slightly increases your own radiation dose if you occasionally eat fungi with higher cesium-137 values.” Individual loaded mushrooms are therefore harmless, the total amount of Caesium-137 is crucial.
For example, if you eat 200 grams of chestnut rods every week, which are contaminated with 1,400 Becquerel Caesium-137 per kilogram of fresh mass, you will only receive an additional radiation dose of 0.18 millisievert per year. This corresponds to a little more than the radiation dose of three flights from Frankfurt am Main to New York and a little less than a tenth of the natural radiation dose, which is exposed to a person in Germany a year (2.1 millisievert).
However, in addition to cesium, wild mushrooms can also enrich heavy metals such as lead, mercury and cadmium. If you regularly collect and eat mushrooms in the forest, you should therefore not consume more than 200 to 250 grams of wild mushrooms per week, advises the authority. If you want to know more about it, you can look up the detailed measurements of all pollutants at the various locations in the BFS mushroom report.
Source: Federal Office for Radiation Protection; Mushroom report 2025, Urn: NBN: DE: 2025090154450
