EPA Makes a Rad Decision 167
New submitter QuantumPion writes
"The Environmental Protection Agency released draft guidelines last month that could significantly relax radiation hazard standards in the case of a radiological event in the United States by using risk-based decisions. The goal is to have limits that make sense in an emergency that are different from the limits in day-to-day life. From the article: 'Currently, the only guidance are the extremely strict standards that apply for EPA Superfund sites and nuclear plant decommissioning, which are as low as 0.010–0.025 rem/year, far below the natural background levels in the U.S. of 0.300 rem/year, and even well below the average amount of radioactive materials that Americans eat each year. And these guidelines aren’t really different from the 1992 PAG, except in the area of long-term cleanup standards and, perhaps, standards for resettlement. What’s the big deal here? As radworkers, we’re allowed to get 5 rem/year. 2 rem/year doesn’t rate a second thought. ... No one has ever been harmed by 5 rem/year, so setting emergency levels at 2 rem/year is pretty mild and more than reasonable. ... Think of it this way. The situations covered by these new guidelines are similar to someone dying of thirst who has the chance to drink fresh water having 2,000 pCi per gallon of radium in it. While the safe drinking water levels are 20 pCi/gal for Ra, 2,000 pCi/gal is of no threat, especially if you’re going to die from imminent dehydration. Of course, a bag of potato chips has 3,500 picocuries, so go figure.'"
Oblig xkcd (Score:2, Informative)
Radiation Chart [xkcd.com]
Re:Oblig xkcd (Score:5, Insightful)
Radiation Chart [xkcd.com]
Unfortunately that chart doesn't work for any kind of ingested radioactive substance, and it's kind of disingenous for Randall to present it as if it's a meaningful comparison. There's plan radiation, and then there's radioactive contamination in dust, liquid or aerosol form, and the second one is the gift that keeps on giving.
IANAhealthphysicist, but I can read Wikipedia, and I'm pretty sure you get a lot more radiation damage to your cells if you eat or breathe in a radioactive particle than if you sit next to the same number of bequerels on the bench, because your body can incoporate the radioactive emitter directly into your cells for the entire rest of its (maximum of bioactive and radioactive) lifespan, and your skin won't screen out the alpha radiation like it does for an internal source. Iodine-equivalents are pretty nasty since although they have a half-life on the order of days, if they get inside you they dump all that radiation into your thyroid, which is not a good place to have it. Long-term, Radioactive strontium is the worst because it replaces calcium and so binds directly to your bone marrow, which is not good for leukemia. And potassium-equivalents are in the mid range, with a half-life on the order of months to years and they are bioavailable, but not permanently so. As far as we know.
Oh, and a lot of those last have been dumped into the ocean by Fukushima, and are now inside fish. Do they bioaccumulate up the food chain? We're not really sure, but we'll probably find out. It's a wonderful science experiment!
tldr: Don't eat, drink or breathe radioactive gunk. It's worse for you than it looks.
Re:Oblig xkcd (Score:5, Informative)
tldr: Don't eat, drink or breathe radioactive gunk. It's worse for you than it looks.
This advice is pretty much worthless, since no one is going to intentionally ingest radioactive gunk. So here is some useful advice:
1. Buy a shaker of "no-salt" (KCl) or "lite-salt" (mixture of NaCl and KCl).
2. Buy a bottle of water purification tablets (iodine).
3. Buy a bottle of calcium supplements.
You should do this now (or the next time you go shopping) because if you wait till after a radioactive event, they will be sold out. When there is a leak/detonation/whatever, you add these to your diet. The copious amounts of these elements will cause your body to expel the surplus in your urine, along with most of the radioactive isotopes of the same elements (or strontium in the case of calcium). This simple $10-$20 investment may save your life.
Re: (Score:2)
Buy a shaker of "no-salt" (KCl)
You realize that the K40 in that no-salt is already radioactive, right [wikipedia.org]? From the article:
"An adult human body contains about 160 grams of potassium, hence about 0.000117 x 160 = 0.0187 grams of 40K; whose decay produces about 4,400 disintegrations per second (becquerels) continuously throughout the life of the body."
Re: (Score:3)
This advice is pretty much worthless
Only if you misapply it as advice for how to avoid harm from radiation. It's good advice if someone were comparing risk between internal vs external radiation measurements.
Your advice is pretty much worthless, to a 103 year old man who is more likely to die from almost anything other than radiation damage to his thyroid.
You were not wrong, and neither was he. And YOUR advice is helpful, but you really need to consider your delivery and not call someone's statement worthless just because you wanted to disc
Re: (Score:2)
Well, you apparently don't read very well. Inhaled radiation is definitely more dangerous. However, ingested radiation depends upon the type of radiation emitted and the specific element. Ingested uranium or plutonium will pass right through the body without being absorbed, so the exposure is very time limited. We ingest radioactive potassium every single day, in fact, our lives depend upon it, and >99% of all potassium on earth is radioactive.
Re: (Score:2)
It still is meaningful. (Score:4, Informative)
However, The chart is given in Sv. Sv takes into account that some radiation is more harmful than others. So, the biological effects from 1 mSv should be the same whether it came from an alpha emmiter or a beta emmiter.
Again, some radionuclides concentrate in parts of the body (others are eliminated quickly - see effective halflife which combines radiological halflife and biological halflife). So, how can we know how many mSv we might get from ingesting one isotope or another? You want to look at commited dose [wikipedia.org]. This is a calculation of how much dose (mSv) you recieve from ingesting some radioisotope. You then use that figure, in mSv, to compare against the chart on xkcd. What you might be interested in is ALI [nucleonica.net] (annual limit on intake). This will give you an amount of a radionuclide (measured in activity or mass) that, if ingested, will give you the highest allowable dose (measured in mSv).
So, you can compare the damage done by various radioisotopes done to you in various ways if you are comparing them in the right units, mSv. But you couldn't compare them just by giving the amount of substance (without considering what kind of radiation and what in the body was irradiated). But, those calculations can be done, and the answer is given in mSv or mrem. This is why the xkcd chart uses mSv for the units, so that a meaningful comparison can be made.
Potaytoe Chips (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2012/03/10/fukushimas-refugees-are-victims-of-irrational-fear-not-radiation/ [forbes.com]
Re: (Score:1)
For once. I'm happy to be protected by a paywall from the stupid...
Where did the chips come from? (Score:2)
Article is devoid of citations. Are Irish spuds as highly radioactive as Idaho spuds? Are spuds from Oregon spuds from volcanic spuds as radioactive?
Chips can't be radioactive if produced from material free of radioactive material.
Re: (Score:3)
"Are Irish spuds as highly radioactive as Idaho spuds?"
What do you mean? Russet or Yukon Gold?
Re:Where did the chips come from? (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, potatoes can't be produced from material free of radioisotopes..... http://www.livestrong.com/article/303878-a-list-of-the-most-radioactive-foods/ [livestrong.com]
Potatoes contain gobs of potassium, which has a naturally occurring radioactive isotope (K40). Bananas have the same issue. Unlike C14, K40 is primordial, so everywhere you have potassium, you have essentially the same concentration of K40.
Re: (Score:2)
Our bodies have evolved to consume that stuff safely, but not the stuff that came out of Fukushima. Not all radiation is the same.
Re: (Score:2)
Also your body secrets that K-40 quickly while the other elements could clog up in the system and remain over time. Though I imagine most would just go through the gastrointestinal tract without getting absorbed.
Re: (Score:3)
Chips can't be radioactive if produced from material free of radioactive material.
No such materials exist. At least no such biological materials. Both potassium and carbon are naturally radioactive, and biological matter contains plenty of them.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Quick ban potassium! The potential for dirty bombs is too great....
Oh noooo the bananas!!!!!
-ac because while I know this is funny and trendy I don't feel like being easily indexable by carnivore.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That would be a very dirty bomb. Very sticky too.
Re: (Score:2)
You can get non-radioactive biological materials
Where?
but mice have been raised without carbon-14
There are other radioactive materials than just these two. Sure, you can separate out every radioactive isotope at least to some rather impressive level. But that hasn't been done.
And even if you did do it, you still have to worry about contamination later. For example, it takes an impressive amount of shielding to block cosmic rays. You basically have to dig a big hole in somewhat radioactive earth to get away from that. That leads to several possible sources of radioactive contamination which hav
Re:Where did the chips come from? (Score:5, Interesting)
They weren't free of it. The mice had only one fifth of the carbon 14 normally in them.
That's quite an improvement and allowed tracking of tagged substances. But it's still a long way from free or near enough to do truly low radiation studies. It also doesn't address the other radio-isotopes.
It's extremely experimentally difficult to raise animals free of radionuclides. Everything they eat drink or breathe has to be isotopically free of multiple radionuclides. You have to do that for at least a couple generations so that mothers don't pass on so much of the radionuclides from their own blood and tissues to the developing fetuses inside them, or the eggs they lay.
It's been proposed to set up a laboratory to do this for the purpose of setting baselines for radiation standards by comparing what the effect of nearly zero radiation on life is.
The cost would be quite high and as yet there hasn't been a lot of support for it especially from the UN.
Re:Where did the chips come from? (Score:5, Informative)
The only radioactive isotope of carbon is C14. The amount of C14 versus C12 is roughly 0.0000000001%. That is one part in one trillion. A human body has roughly 80 trillion cells.
Yes.
So 80 of your cells contain *ONE* atom of C14. Your whole body contains 80 C14 atoms ...
No. An 80-kilogram person has about 14 or 15 kg of carbon atoms. This works out to trillions of carbon atoms per human cell. Therefore every cell has approximately one atom of C14, and the human body as a whole has almost a quadrillion C14 atoms.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, guess what? All the numbers being discussed here are like that. Meaninglessly small. That was the entire point.
Re: (Score:2)
Then you missed the argument, the parent was of the opinion that the numbers are huge and the EFFECT is small.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
So, you are assuming that each cell in your body contains one carbon atom????
Let's try this again:
Mass of human body: ~75kg
Carbon makeup of human body: ~18%
Ratio of C12 to C14: 1.35x10^12
which gives us ~1x10^-8 g C14 in human body or more than 4x10^14 atoms of C14.
Re: (Score:3)
Check your math ... your numbers are implausibly low. Hint: if there were that few C14 atoms in a body, carbon dating wouldn't work.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah I made an error ;D
However I'm surprised someone realized!
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed - I didn't bother with following the math because the conclusion was so implausible given that carbon dating works.
Re: (Score:2)
Hint: if there were that few C14 atoms in a body, carbon dating wouldn't work.
Hey, you're talking about me right there. Dating anything based on carbon is problematic for me, should I ingest some medicinal charcoal for that?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, you have to calculate by mass.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_the_human_body#Elemental_composition [wikipedia.org]
16kg of Carbon. From there on, I'd leave the calculation of real numbers as exercise to the reader.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14#In_the_human_body [wikipedia.org]
Now, the kicker is that Carbon, unlike Cesium or Iodine or Strontium or Plutonium, forms part of your DNA. And we have enough Carbon and cells, that about a dozen or so cells will literally have their DNA exploded from within by Carbon 1
Re: (Score:2)
Chips can't be radioactive if produced from material free of radioactive material.
Maybe potato chips are the secret ingredient in Andrea Rossi's E-Cat Cold Fusion machine . . . ?
Re: (Score:2)
Chips can't be radioactive if produced from material free of radioactive material.
No, but if you made potato chips out of the element Lead and then ate them, you would die from a whole new set of reasons.
Re: (Score:2)
Potatoes are grown using commercial fertilizers. Fertilizer contains Potassium to promote leaf growth, which promotes bigger, healthier potatoes. Potassium naturally has a radioactive isotope, K40. There will be some uptake of K40 in each potato.
Here [berkeley.edu] is a paper about theorizing that the lung cancer caused by smoking, is mostly caused by radioactive phosphates taken up by the tobacco plant due to heavy use of phosphate-rich fertilizers used to make bigger tobacco leafs, which also happen to contain Lead-2
It's All Relative (Score:4, Insightful)
"We're changing the standards so you can't sue us immediately after the disaster. But if you get cancer 30 years down the line, we and our money will be long gone and no longer giving a darn in Pattaya Beach, Thailand."
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
You're going to have one hell of a time trying to prove your cancer 30 years down the road was caused by some insignificant radiation exposure and not some other biological/ecological factor. Carcinogens. Carcinogens everywhere.
Re:It's All Relative (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, that where the scumbags can get their money today and weasel out of the consequences later...
Re: (Score:2)
"He's had a cup of coffee in his lifetime! Judge please throw out this case."
Re:It's All Relative (Score:5, Insightful)
"We're changing the standards so you can't sue us immediately after the disaster. But if you get cancer 30 years down the line, we and our money will be long gone and no longer giving a darn in Pattaya Beach, Thailand."
Okay, I know you're trying to be funny, but let's be serious for a moment: Why shouldn't the EPA try to limit lawsuits? They cost you and me, the taxpayer, a lot of money. It slows down the entire judicial process, and increases the cost of excercising your rights in the judiciary. There's filing fees now, lawyers fees, and every motion and such you file also costs money. This is fine for corporations who can just pass the buck on to their customers, but for Joe Average, commencing or defending against a legal action can easily bankrupt him. Is that fair? Shouldn't he be able to sue people who have legitimately wronged him as well -- or should that be something reserved only for the wealthy? Conversely, if he is on the receiving end... should he be bankrupted defending against an action that ultimately failed? Any contact with the judicial process tends to be highly corrosive to the average person. It is often ruinous, irrespective of the merits of their position.
Given that, why shouldn't the government try to limit personal injury cases to those where the only evidence of harm won't surface for thirty years? Do you want a legal system that punishes people based on probability, or actuality? If so, thought crime suddenly becomes a lot more justifiable, as well as imprisoning people based on genetic markers, etc.
But I do acknowledge that statistically, we know that in a given group of say, 100 people, if exposed to X intensity of radiation over Y amount of time, Z of them will develop health problems. We can't say with any confidence which of them will develop health problems, but we can say with confidence how probable it is that at least Z of them will. In a case like this where you know harm has happened but the costs won't be known for a long time, a fine seems like a better way to deal with this than lawsuits, provided the fine is proportional to the actual harm caused, plus whatever punitive damages are justified (was it really an accident, or negligence?).
In this case, the government should be the plaintiff, not the individual. Conversely, the government should take the money gathered from these fines and put it into a general fund. If and when affected individuals develop health problems consistent with previously-documented radiation exposure, the government pays out of that fund.
I think this is the most fair method of enacting justice in such a situation -- the companies (or individuals) involved are penalized shortly after the actual accident occurs, so there is financial incentive to prevent it in the future, and no possibility of them profiting from it later, but at the same time recognizing that we may not know for a very long time who was actually harmed, or to what degree.
From the looks of it, this is more or less what the EPA is trying to do. Of course... such an elegant solution will never survive contact with Congress, but... it's the thought that counts.
Re: (Score:3)
Okay, I know you're trying to be funny, but let's be serious for a moment: Why shouldn't the EPA try to limit lawsuits? They cost you and me, the taxpayer, a lot of money. It slows down the entire judicial process, and increases the cost of excercising your rights in the judiciary.
yeah, fuck people after all... it cost muney and stuff...
Re: (Score:2)
yeah, fuck people after all... it cost muney and stuff...
Did you bother reading the rest of my post where I go into how we can balance public and private interests here without creating a cluster-f*ck of high cost litigation that ultimately winds up costing all of us? Or did you just knee-jerk your foot into your own mouth?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Do you want a legal system that punishes people based on probability, or actuality?
Probability. If you drink and drive I don't care if you didn't hit anyone this time, what you did was extremely dangerous and should be discouraged.
The situation is that we know radiation is harmful in some cases, but don't have the tools to determine if small doses are even if the patient goes on to develop cancer at some point in the future. We want to discourage people from releasing it though, that much is clear. And yes, that applies to everyone, not just nuclear plant operators.
Re: (Score:2)
I think this is the most fair method of enacting justice in such a situation -- the companies (or individuals) involved are penalized shortly after the actual accident occurs, so there is financial incentive to prevent it in the future, and no possibility of them profiting from it later, but at the same time recognizing that we may not know for a very long time who was actually harmed, or to what degree.
Knowing that the responsible party had a fine levied against them 30 years ago is scant comfort to the individual who ends up with cancer and the family that it bankrupts.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
you didnt even read the summary, let alone TFA, before saying something completely inaccurate and ignorant.
actually pretty typical for a slashdot poster.
litigation (Score:2)
future proofing the failure litigation.
Stupid fucking headline (Score:1)
Bad News, Everyone! (Score:1)
Everything with Potassium is Radioactive!!
OMFG, let's all die of eliminating an essential mineral from our diets. :)
BTW, That Red clay mud that half the country is covered with has Uranium in 3-4% concentration in a lot of places; thus the Radon problem.
Vitamin R is provably good for your health, from thousands of Manhattan Project retirees, if you're not predisposed to leukemia...
.
Re: (Score:2)
BTW, That Red clay mud that half the country is covered with has Uranium in 3-4% concentration in a lot of places; thus the Radon problem.
I would worry since that stuff is all around me, but I know from experience that there's no dirt in our soil, just a whole shitload of rocks.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
41K is stable, and it's 6.7% of Earth's potassium.
Potassium 39 is also stable, it makes up 93.3%. Only Potassium 40 is radioactive, (half life of 1.25 billion years), and it makes up just 0.012% of the Earth's Potassium.
We don't consider ingestion of K to be a health hazard, quite the opposite, it's essential.. A 60Kg adult typically retains 120 grams of potassium in their body at any one time. If you consume more potassium, the body excretes the excess.
Yum. (Score:1)
Mmmmm. Picocurries.
Re:Yum. (Score:5, Funny)
Well, it's not smart to eat a lot of curry, if it's your first time.
Wow. Sanity. From Washington DC. (Score:1)
This article is (Score:3)
A rad decision? (Score:2)
That's totally tubular, dudes!
We're safe. (Score:2)
Of course, a bag of potato chips has 3,500 picocuries, so go figure.'"
So slashdotters are safe then, since we only eat cheetoes... which I expect have been so thoroughly processed to remove any and all traces of this "potato" thing you speak of to render it both nutritionally and radiologically inert.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
You forgot to consider the keyboard buildup of cheetoes which is much more deadly...
Wanna see an optical illusion? Hold your keyboard over your head, look up at it, and then shake it back and forth vigorously. (trollface)
The alternative, of course (Score:1)
Re:The alternative, of course (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually Japan didn't ban bananas. The Forbes writer got it wrong.
The new tighter limits on food, water etc. set by Japan were for contamination due to cesium-134 and -137, byproducts of fission usually only found in the wild after a reactor goes wrong or from nuclear explosions. The "natural" levels of radiation from potassium, rubidium etc. are already factored in to the safety regs.
I'm in Japan at the moment, I bought bananas a couple of days ago -- they're a cheap source of energy (and potassium too) since I'm doing a lot of walking around and sightseeing while I'm here.
Sound science-based decision (Score:2)
Ever read Physics for Future Presidents [youtube.com]? It's a good source of scientific information that should influence public policy more than it currently does.
Hmm... (Score:2)
Background relevance (Score:3)
pay for by mr bruns nuclear power co (Score:2)
pay for by mr bruns nuclear power co
Re: Well duh! (Score:2, Insightful)
The fact that there is naturally occurring radioactivity does not mean it is safe to add more. Have a look at studies of increased mortality in nuclear workers from cancer, extra rads do matter and the public should not be exposed. Also, one needs to be very cautious in equating external dose with ingested dose, for some isotopes it may have similar impacts but breathing in plutonium for example is ill advised.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The fact that there is naturally occurring radioactivity does not mean it is safe to add more.
But it is a good indication that one can safely add more. As to the rest of your post, look at the error bars of such studies. I bet you'll see no actual evidence of increased mortality for small doses of radiation. Instead you'll see evidence consistent with a wide range of possibilities.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
No, it's not an indication of any such thing.
Bottom line is that some radiation exposure is inevitable and that some more probably isn't going to kill you, the reality is that ionizing radiation is ionizing radiation and that you shouldn't just assume that you can add more just because you haven't been killed by the radiation in bananas.
What's more, it makes a huge difference if you're prepared for the exposure versus not expecting it. It's normal when working in a nuclear plant to be taking potassium iodid
Re: (Score:3)
Really?
I've never worked civilian nuclear power, but when I was a Navy Nuke, we didn't wear protective gear, nor did we take potassium iodide supplements.
Re: (Score:2)
nor did we take potassium iodide supplements.
How do you know that the Navy wasn't just dumping into your chow?
Re: (Score:2)
Due to an injury I suffered once, I was unable to do do my normal job for a couple weeks. During the period, I was detailed as a cook's assistant (which pissed the cook off no end, since he had no more use for a one-armed man than the engineering dept did) - the food came from commercial sources (yeah, we used the same canned foods that you buy in grocery stores, just in job lots), and didn't inc
Re: (Score:3)
How would radioactive iodine be released by the normal functioning of a nuclear reactor?
And in abnormal functioning, would the problem of being right next to a nuclear reactor with breached co
Re: (Score:2)
You seem to be under the impression that a Naval reactor is a big tub of water filled with fuel rods, that we stirred by hand.
We used what's called a Pressurized Water Reactor. The contamination (those radioisotopes you're so concerned about) stayed in the primary loop, and we stayed outside the reactor compartment (for the most part -
Re: (Score:2)
It's normal when working in a nuclear plant to be taking potassium iodide on a regular basis, which isn't something that the general populace is likely to be doing.
You would have to have a significantly elevated risk of being exposed to radioactive iodine to justify it. Just working at a nuclear plant doesn't mean you have that risk.
And what does "not assuming" such things do for us? Not much in the absence of evidence.
Re: (Score:2)
For me, I think the EPA' decision to shorten US residents useful lifespan by 2, 5, maybe 10 years
Or maybe 0 years. Or given the circumstances, even a negative amount of years since they are weakening the regulation in the advent of an emergency, which is where one would expect other rather urgent issues affecting life expectancy to rear their ugly heads. Is it somehow better to die of thirst or starve to death now than live with a slightly shorter lifespan maybe?
Re: Well duh! (Score:4, Informative)
Cesium doesn't linger in mammals. Depending on the tissues it lodges in after inhalation or ingestion (bone, fat, muscle etc.) its biological halflife is between 70 and 120 days i.e. half the cesium taken in will be pissed away or excreted in that time, then half the residue over the next period and so on. It's the same with strontium and a number of other problem specimens in the radiochemical zoo although the half-life varies from element to element.
Iodine-131 is the major contamination problem from fission releases, it's preferentially concentrated in the thyroid and is very radioactive but because of that it goes away quite quickly, with a halflife of only 8 days or so and superdosing with iodine tablets will prevent uptake of I-131 to a large extent. Hospitals and therapeutic facilities that use I-131 to "burn out" thyroid cancers flush residues into the sewer systems leading to the occasional panic when I-131 is detected in miniscule amounts in rivers, lakes etc. downstream.
Re: (Score:2)
Cesium doesn't linger in mammals. Depending on the tissues it lodges in after inhalation or ingestion (bone, fat, muscle etc.) its biological halflife is between 70 and 120 days i.e. half the cesium taken in will be pissed away or excreted in that time,
The biological half life of Cesium in Humans is function of Potassium intake, consume too little, the longer it hangs around, maybe a year, maybe two years.
Besides consuming known clean (or least contaminated) food, drinking water that passed thru a carbon activated filter, one should take known safe mineral supplements containing Potassium, Iodine, and Calcium after a nuclear event. Shortening the biological half life of these isotopes should be one of your a back up plans.
Re: (Score:3)
The fact that there is naturally occurring radioactivity does not mean it is safe to add more.
There is some evidence that a small amount of additional radiation is actually good for you. This is called radiation hormesis [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately Fukushima wasn't exactly a measured, controlled dose.
Re: (Score:2)
Um, you do realize that radiation is everywhere. So it's nearly impossible to be not exposed to radiation. Hell, even television that we watch gives off a fair amount of rads, so either you can accept it, or freak out about it. Your choice, although, if you choose the first part, you're liable not to have as many ulcers in the nearby future!!
If you're referring to x-ray radiation given off by CRT TV's, I'd bet that most people here haven't watched TV on a CRT in a number of years. I haven't owned a CRT TV for 6 years - and it's been about 10 years since I've had a CRT monitor.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Um, you do realize that radiation is everywhere.
But thanks to the people who brought you Fukashima, the background levels and fission fragments now put everyone in a whole new ballgame. A game where only the radioactive get to play.
Re: (Score:2)
There is a difference between electromagnetic radiation and ionizing radiation.
One is just radio or light waves, and is harmless below certain amplitudes that you don't see in common products. The other is bits of atoms flying off, causing biological changes on a cellular level, and those materials are highly restricted.
Which category do you think a television falls into?
Re: (Score:2)
There is a difference between electromagnetic radiation and ionizing radiation.
One is just radio or light waves, and is harmless below certain amplitudes that you don't see in common products. The other is bits of atoms flying off, causing biological changes on a cellular level, and those materials are highly restricted.
UV, X-, and Gama-rays are all all both electromagnetic and ionizing. Those properties are not mutually exclusive and ionizing radiation isn't exclusively "bits of atoms flying off".
Which category do you think a television falls into?
CRT televisions use high speed electrons to excite phosphors to emit light. As a side effect a small amount of X-rays are emitted. For this reason CRT screens are made of leaded glass. This blocks most, but not all, of the X-rays. So for most of the history of television, watching TV meant being irradiated a small but measura
Re:How do you know that? (Score:4, Informative)
silly, the people with the higher incidence of cancer in the hiroshima study had exposures of a good fraction of a gray (100 rem), e.g. half a gray at 1500 meters distance. that's way out of the league of what we're talking about here.
Re: (Score:2)
oh? the main thing learned from Hiroshima survivors is that the extra radiation shaved at most a couple years off the lifespan of the survivors on average.
not as bad as you thought, eh?
Re: (Score:2)
And? What is about the not survivous? I simply don't get your point. Roughly 100,000 people died after the bomb during the next ten years. Not as bad as you thought? Sorry, what do you try to tell? The radiation after the bombs was harmless?
Then why did so many people die the years after? Why did they have 10,000ds of misshaped births? Why you simply read something about it instead of claiming bullshit? Feel guilty that your country dropped the bombs? So you make it look harmless?
Re: (Score:2)
sorry, you're reading hype and hysteria of made-up estimates.]
Let's address the birth defects stats, there are NONE attributable to the bomb. zero.
http://www.rerf.jp/radefx/genetics_e/birthdef.html [www.rerf.jp]
the total pre-population of surrounding areas wasn't known. there is thus no way to know ratio of natural to unnatural deaths, except the study I mentioned.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, you are wrong, but I don't care.
There are hundreds of books about the topic, often with a few hundred photos of victims (any variation of long survivor or deformed child). And also there are movies, I saw a lot of them as a young child. In fact I believe it was shown in school in the history classes, too.
The total amount of people who died in the 30 years after the bomb is roughly the same as the amount of people that died during the first few days. The hospitals in japan where full for 2 decades mit
Re: (Score:2)
yes, there are volumes of misinformation but few legitimate peer-reviewed studies. You don't know what you saw as a child, you might have even seen reels of Tokyo conventional bombing victims with half their face burned off or deformed babies born from mothers with STD
Birth defects happen for many reasons. It is similar situation of pictures of lepers and other disease victims from the middle east being show and labeled as "Iraqi Depleted Uranium Victim!", or a dessicated body in the desert label
Re: (Score:2)
this brings up cool subject, radiation poisoning especially affects the rapidly dividing cells such as the digestive tract. this is why a fatal dose can have initial illness followed by "walking ghost" phase where victim feels some better that can last up to a couple weeks, but their digestive tract (and some other important things) have completely died.
Point is a fetus is extremely sensitive to radiation being one of those rapidly dividing cell creatures, so heave dose just means the pregnancy is naturall
Re: (Score:2)
The fetus are not killed or malformed by the radiation but concieved by women or fathered by men who where at the bomb site.
I talk about children born 10 to 30 years later! Japan had plenty of them. When I was young and in school the long term effects of the bombing where wuite often discussed in public. What you think why the anti atom movement especially anti atom weapons movement in germany is so strong? Everyone saw the victims in TV. There where exchange programs between Japan and european countries to
Re:How do you know that? (Score:5, Informative)
Because "radioactive environment" actually has to be quantified before it's meaningful. You're sitting in a radioactive environment right now. This is what you and the vast majority of Americans who grew up with the X-Men don't understand. So you have to talk about exactly how much radiation you're sitting in.
So let's talk about it. Let's say you weigh 70kg. That means you are made of approximately 7.0 x 10^26 carbon atoms (among other things). Carbon 14, a naturally occurring unstable radioactive isotope of carbon, makes up about 1 in every trillion carbon atoms. That's 1 in 1 x 10^11. Which means there are somewhere around 7 x 10^15 carbon 14 atoms inside you right now. Carbon 14 has a half life of 5730 years, give or take 40 years. That means that several thousand atoms of carbon 14 undergo radioactive decay inside you every second. I'll spare you the math, since there are already too many scary numbers in this post. That means there are thousands of beta particles running around loose inside you, every second of the day. In short, you are radioactive.
And... so what. Those thousands of decay events per second add up to a millirem per year, so tiny it's not even measurable by a normal Geiger counter. You are unavoidably exposed to radiation simply by existing. And here's what matters to you: that radiation you expose yourself to by being made of carbon has no measurable affect on your lifespan, or anyone else's. Something else will kill you first, long before the radiation of yourself induces a cancer inside yourself. Most cancers are chemically induced, not radioactively induced.
Yes, there ARE safe levels of radiation. The numbers matter.
Re: (Score:2)
We'd all live to be 200 years old if not for that nefarious C-14!
Re: (Score:2)
If the K-40 didn't get us first...
Re:How do you know that? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Oops, you are right here.
Re: (Score:3)
...
Sorry ... hundred thousands of dead people in the decades AFTER the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and AFTER Chernobyl say something different.
...
Yes, they say they don't exist.
Please provide a citation to an actual scientific study supporting these claims. You can't. There aren't any. This is just urban folklore.
The total number of deaths attributable to the atomic bombings, but occurring after October 1945 (when the last of the acutely injured perished) is no more than about 4000 people. Nearly all were individuals that received high levels of radiation exposure close to the bomb hypocenters.
Re: (Score:2)
Lol.
A city with 300000 inhabitants gets bombed. A few miles circle is completely destroyed. A few more miles around it burn down to the ground. All this more or less instantly.
And you believe only 4000 people died? So: god had a hand over them?
Why don't you jsut read the wikipedia article and then do your own research? And what do you mean with: "citation to an actual scientific study"?
There are scientific studies about FACTs? I did not know that. Can you show my any scientific study that Hiroshima was bomb