Mushrooms And Geiger Counters

jonerik writes "This article in the New York Times details the efforts being undertaken by Moscow food inspectors to keep radioactive produce out of the city's open-air markets and off of dinner tables. And the efforts are paying off, with seizures of 'hot' produce up by 10% so far this year vs. last year. Laced with cesium and strontium thanks to the radioactivity released by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, forest produce (including berries and mushrooms) is more difficult to track than farm produce, but the inspectors apparently manage to keep on top of it, with one exception: Old babushkas who sell illegal produce from the sides of streets and who city officials are hesitant to crack down on."

Comments

Mmmmm....radioactive mushrooms.

[greenhide]

You haven't lived till you've had my grandma's Cream of Glowing Mushroom & Barley Soup.

On a more serious note: while it is important to keep these sorts of foods out of the general population, I wonder what is being done to help those whose livelihood has up to now depended upon growing/gathering and selling these foods. If they can't sell the produce, they may just eat it themselves, meaning that they will be exposed to a greater amount of radiation than most people.

This is probably one of the reasons they don't want to crack down on the babushkas.It would also be interesting to see what the public reaction to this will be...will more people seek out the babushkas to get the "good stuff"?

FYI

[Brandon T.]

Babushka is the russian word for 'grandma' (it can also be meant as 'old lady').

Risotto ai funghi

[citizenkeller]

Yes, there^'s something to be said about mushrooms as natural geiger counters...

When the Chernobyl catastrophe happened, I lived in Ticino (the southern, Italian-speaking part of Switzerland). Just when "the radioactive cloud" was passing over the Alps, we were in the middle of the local rain season. For a while, we received a warning not to eat any salad or other vegetable. Although this was probably somewhat an histerical reaction, to this day our mushrooms show heavy traces of radioactive isotopes, going back to that time.

Quite a lot of plants and animals can be sued as bioindicators, i.e. natural indicators of some substance (usually a pollutant) in our environment. Lichens, for instance, can be used as a very precise measure of a city's pollution.

BTW, "Risotto ai funghi" is a local recipe of rice, safran and mushrooms. If you are lucky enough to have safe mushrooms at hand, give it a try! You won't regret it.

Re:Risotto ai funghi

[ceejayoz]

Quite a lot of plants and animals can be sued as bioindicators

Lets hope they've got good lawyers.

Also...

[floydigus]

Eggs don't bounce.
There are no bones in a jelly fish.

None of this matters so much

[Henry V .009]

They're using the LNT model for radiation damage (find how much radiation it takes to kill 1000 out of a 100,000 in a population and how much it takes to kill 100 out of a 100,000 and draw a straight line.) The LNT model wasn't actually such a bad theoretical prediction before we found out that cells could repair genetic damage to some degree. Now that we know it (and have some further evidence from hard studies as well), the LNT-based safety models are known to be severely inaccurate. The Chernobyl death estimates that were based on the LNT model were also severely flawed.

In fact, the only cancer spike that is commonly attributed to Chernobyl is an increase in thyroid cancer rates. Of course, two facts about the increase are rarely reported: 1) The rate of increase in adults is the same as the rate of increase in infants--unlike what radiation damage is known to do, and 2) the rate of thyroid cancer is very much lower than the rate in most western countries with modern medical technology. Could this suggest that what has changed is better monitoring of thyroid cancer, and not an increased death rate?

Beyond silly (for the most part) mushroom hunts, does the LNT model cause us any actual harm? Well, yes, when policy makers use it to justify overblown safety standards on nuclear power plants that drive up the cost of nuclear power (and mean that we burn more Middle Eastern Oil). It's also the reason we don't have things like this: Project Orion.

I am all for safety standards on nuclear power. But I want them to be based on the latest scientific data, not on out-dated 1940's guesswork.

Re:None of this matters so much

[Henry V .009]

It's not my personal observation of thyroid cancer rates. You can find out more in a number of places, including a special issue of Physics Today a couple years back. I said nothing about the absence of radiation. I was talking about the danger of low level radiation (radiation level can be measured with a geiger counter). How many rads is too much? The LNT model had a guess as to the answer to that problem. That guess has been used to make policy.

Pointing to the inadequacy of one method of estimation used without any real attempt to make a scientific evaluation of the situation based on all the available evidence doesn't convince me of anything.

I wasn't trying to conduct a fullscale scientific evalutation in a slashdot post. Instead I was merely pointing out a possibility that has been raised by a number of scientists in the field. Judging from your post, I'd imagine that you didn't get your opinion about the matter from a detailed scientific evaluation either, so I couldn't have done much damage. If you're interested, you can take a look at the relevant journals yourself.

Re:None of this matters so much

[Henry V .009]

Yeah, but the thing is, if it were that, you'd see a much higher thyroid cancer rise in infants than in adults. Since we don't, it suggests that there wasn't enough radiation released over large areas to actually impact thyroid cancer rates. (We know how much radiation was released, it's the models used for estimation of low level radiation damage that were at fault. Mainly the linear no-threshold model.) For that reason whether they took iodine or not shouldn't matter (except for the small number of people close in who got high radiation exposure, mostly firefighters and workers).

A lot more studies need to be conducted in order to find out just what the effects of low-level radiation were. Things like downs-syndrome rates is something that needs to be investigated. However, the effect certainly wasn't the tens of thousands dead by cancer as predicted by the LNT model. And the studies that have been conducted (long-term studies of atomic bomb victims in Japan) seem to point to either a low threat from low-level radiation, or the absence of a threat.

Re:None of this matters so much

[g4dget]

The LNT model wasn't actually such a bad theoretical prediction before we found out that cells could repair genetic damage to some degree.

LNT stands for "linear no threshold" (a threshold below which no ill effect occurs). The presence of repair mechanisms does not cause a threshold to appear magically: if radiation can kill at high doses with a repair mechanism, then it can kill at very low doses with a repair mechanism because repair mechanisms are not perfect.

Now, in the presence of repair mechanisms, the curve might be non-linear: at very low doses, it might be easier for the body to repair occasional damage. In fact, there are very good reasons to believe that this is the case, and that kind of behavior was certainly plausible in the 1940's.

But that doesn't invalidate the LNT model--the LNT model isn't intended as a best estimate of actual damage, it's an attempt at a conservative choice of an upper bound. Merely knowing about the existence of repair mechanisms doesn't affect that choice--if we wanted to make the upper bound more aggressive, we'd have to know a lot more about the behavior of those repair mechanisms than we do.

Furthermore, we have learned other things since the 1940s. For example, we have learned that a single change in a DNA base pair can cause cancer or other diseases.

I am all for safety standards on nuclear power. But I want them to be based on the latest scientific data, not on out-dated 1940's guesswork.

Rest assured, it is. In fact, the latest scientific data suggests that nuclear power is overall not such a good idea--neither from a safety point of view or from an economic point of view. It's just that some people are so enamored with the technology (or have so much money invested in it) that they simply don't want to face facts.

Re:None of this matters so much

[Henry V .009]

LNT stands for "linear no threshold" (a threshold below which no ill effect occurs). The presence of repair mechanisms does not cause a threshold to appear magically: if radiation can kill at high doses with a repair mechanism, then it can kill at very low doses with a repair mechanism because repair mechanisms are not perfect.

I agree totally.

I am all for safety standards on nuclear power. But I want them to be based on the latest scientific data, not on out-dated 1940's guesswork.

Rest assured, it is. In fact, the latest scientific data suggests that nuclear power is overall not such a good idea--neither from a safety point of view or from an economic point of view. It's just that some people are so enamored with the technology (or have so much money invested in it) that they simply don't want to face facts.

You forget. Politicians create safety standards, not scientists. If you live in the US, you might remember the big flap about Bush's reversal of Clinton's aresenic ppm standards for drinking water. Little of the discussion regarded science.

But it's important to look at the standards as they are. Every mammalian cell suffers about 70 million spontaneous DNA-damaging events per year. (The LNT model was developed before this was known, of course.) Most of that is caused by oxygen free radicals. The maximum annual dose of radiation recommended by ICRP is 1 mSv. That is equivalent to about 2.3 DNA damaging events per year. Natural radiation is responsible for about 5. Even if we raised the standard to around 100 mSv, oxygen would still be responsible for thousands times more damaging events.

Re:None of this matters so much

[g4dget]

But it's important to look at the standards as they are. Every mammalian cell suffers about 70 million spontaneous DNA-damaging events per year. (The LNT model was developed before this was known, of course.) Most of that is caused by oxygen free radicals

Chemical damage is different from radiation-induced damage. The cell can anticipate when chemical damage is most likely to occur and have more repair enzymes at hand. An active cell, for example, is more likely to suffer chemical damage, but it also has more resources to repair it. And the cell may take special precautions to avoid chemical damage during particular stages of the cell cycle. Radiation damage, on the other hand, is completely unpredictable from the point of view of the cell. So, basically, the comparison with chemically induced DNA damage is bogus.

I do agree that there is probably no point in reducing man-made exposure to levels significantly below those occurring naturally--that is pretty much the only solid data we can base a decision on. But as you point out yourself, that's where it is roughly right now. Beyond that, LNT seems like a reasonably conservative model for extrapolation--anything more aggressive at this point would be wild and dangerous speculation.

Re:None of this matters so much

[Henry V .009]

Even if you only look at double-strand breaks that don't get repaired, oxygen still causes thousands of breaks (compared to 3 or 4 by radiation at the levels we were speaking of). Apoptosis and the immune system can often take care of cells that are too damaged.

But beyond the theoretical stuff, we have hard evidence in the case of Japanese atomic bomb survivors that a far more aggresive model than LNT is warrented. Moreover, animal studies provide a great deal of exact information on radiation damage to cells. There is solid data in abundance.

We are often able to come up with resonable standards for limiting heavy metals and toxic elements in our enviroment. It is important to do the same for radiation.

What is wild and dangerous is to rely on fossil fuels to get the major portion of our energy. And the only alternative energy source that could possibly generate a significant portion the power that society currently uses is nuclear. Solar, wind, water, can not provide energy in the scale necessary. And reducing energy requirements to the scale that they could provide would probably result in mass famine in many parts of the world as food production tanks. Though not perfect, nuclear power is safer and cleaner than the alternatives.

Re:None of this matters so much

[g4dget]

Even if you only look at double-strand breaks that don't get repaired, oxygen still causes thousands of breaks (compared to 3 or 4 by radiation at the levels we were speaking of). Apoptosis and the immune system can often take care of cells that are too damaged.

I'm sorry, but that just isn't a sound argument. You can measure double strand breaks in lots of systems, but you don't know whether those numbers apply to cells that matter, like stem cells, reproductive cells, and others. An organism can invest a lot of effort to protect a few important cells against chemical damage, but there is nothing it can do against radiation damage.

But beyond the theoretical stuff, we have hard evidence in the case of Japanese atomic bomb survivors that a far more aggresive model than LNT is warrented.

"Warranted" in what way? Why should we accept any significant extra risk for nuclear energy?

What is wild and dangerous is to rely on fossil fuels to get the major portion of our energy. And the only alternative energy source that could possibly generate a significant portion the power that society currently uses is nuclear.

There is a much easier solution: use less energy. There is absolutely no need to use the amount of energy we do even if we make no changes to our US lifestyle--countries with a higher standard of living use much less energy per capita.

And the best free market way of reducing energy consumption is to make it more expensive.

And reducing energy requirements to the scale that they could provide would probably result in mass famine in many parts of the world as food production tanks.

That, too, is a ridiculous bugaboo and excuse. Places in the world where hunger is rampant do not rely on massive amounts of energy to produce food, and the lot of those people would get worse if they started relying on the costly and inefficient methods of food production we use (they are efficient only if you don't account for externalities).

Hunger stopped being a technological problem a few centuries ago, if it ever was a technological problem at all. Hunger is fundamentally a social problem--a problem of family planning, security, education, politics, and economics. More energy, better crops, or other technology are at best short term fixes, and in the long term make the problem of hunger much worse.

Re:None of this matters so much

[Henry V .009]

I'm sorry, but that just isn't a sound argument. You can measure double strand breaks in lots of systems, but you don't know whether those numbers apply to cells that matter, like stem cells, reproductive cells, and others. An organism can invest a lot of effort to protect a few important cells against chemical damage, but there is nothing it can do against radiation damage.

Many of the defense mechanisms that protect against chemical damage are also useful against radiation damage. As I mentioned, beyond direct repair, apoptosis is one way. The immune system also culls malformed cells. But again, this is theoretical, and theory has to be backed up by actual studies in humans and animals.

"Warranted" in what way? Why should we accept any significant extra risk for nuclear energy?

The studies regarding Japan that I referred to showed no significant risk from low level radiation exposure. They actually showed small (though statistically significant) increase in overall life expectancy. The LNT model is costing society in profound ways: increased pollution through reliance on fossil fuels, increased economic costs (bourne by rich and poor alike), diversion of money that could be more effectively spent on improving public safety in other ways. This "significant risk" you bring up is not backed by good science. The biggest reason to love LNT is not for any scientific or safety reason. Instead it is an awesome political stick.

There is a much easier solution: use less energy. There is absolutely no need to use the amount of energy we do even if we make no changes to our US lifestyle--countries with a higher standard of living use much less energy per capita. And the best free market way of reducing energy consumption is to make it more expensive.

Have you ever seen what happens to the poor (in free markets) when basic necessities like energy and food become expensive? Sure, demand is reduced, but large segments of the population will often go without while the wealthy continue to enjoy abundance. Sure I'm all for free market capitalism as the best tool for keeping prices down for everyone, but that doesn't mean I look at it with rose-colored glasses.

That, too, is a ridiculous bugaboo and excuse. Places in the world where hunger is rampant do not rely on massive amounts of energy to produce food, and the lot of those people would get worse if they started relying on the costly and inefficient methods of food production we use (they are efficient only if you don't account for externalities).

Yes they are more efficent. They also import a large amount of their food. We (western nations) happen to be the ones exporting food to the world. If we stopped or raised prices significantly, many third world countries would no longer be able to afford enough to keep their large (and growing) populations fed.

Hunger stopped being a technological problem a few centuries ago, if it ever was a technological problem at all.

About the same time we started using modern industrial techniques for cultivation and transportion which happen to require a lot of energy.

Re:None of this matters so much

[g4dget]

Have you ever seen what happens to the poor (in free markets) when basic necessities like energy and food become expensive? Sure, demand is reduced, but large segments of the population will often go without while the wealthy continue to enjoy abundance.

Large segments of the population always "go without" what the wealthy enjoy. Large segments of the US population "go without" retirement benefits, job security, privacy, decent health care, extended vacations, and a lot of other things. Those are a lot more important than the ability to cruise around in a gas guzzling SUV, compared to a small, efficient vehicle. If we wanted to reduce those inqualities, that would be very easy: through high taxes on the top few percent of earners, just like income tax was intended to do initially.

Energy prices should be gradually but steadily increased, through taxation on both non-renewable fuels and inefficient consumption. Society would adapt to this by reducing energy usage. That's pretty much the only way, and it works.

Your argumentation is like that of a drug addict who says "I know it's bad for me, but stopping is unpleasant". Your solution to one dangerous drug (oil) is to switch to another dangerous one (nuclear energy), which just happens to not make you look quite as bad.

We (western nations) happen to be the ones exporting food to the world. If we stopped or raised prices significantly, many third world countries would no longer be able to afford enough to keep their large (and growing) populations fed.

Yup, I have to admit it's a neat package. We destroy indigenous cultures and farming methods, effectively encourage population growth, interfere with family planning, and cause other nations to become dependent on our food and indebted to us. The latest twist is to make farmers dependent on even more expensive, genetically modified crops that may or may not work in our industrial farms but make no sense in other countries.

Creating large masses of poor and hungry people is great for getting powerful. The Catholic church discovered this a long time ago, but we are doing it so much better these days.

Re:None of this matters so much

[Henry V .009]

Large segments of the population always "go without" what the wealthy enjoy.

Which is fine until 'what the wealthy enjoy' becomes basic necessities like food and energy.

Energy prices should be gradually but steadily increased, through taxation on both non-renewable fuels and inefficient consumption. Society would adapt to this by reducing energy usage. That's pretty much the only way, and it works.

Oh, this will happen without taxation. Scarcity will increase the price. Unfortunately, scarcity has consequences in regard to basic necessities.

Now I don't get your argument. You say that a few people dying from radiation is such a catastrophe that we need to go massively overboard on our safety standards. On the other hand, millions dead in food riots doesn't seem to phase you. Am I being trolled here?

Re:None of this matters so much

[g4dget]

Which is fine until 'what the wealthy enjoy' becomes basic necessities like food and energy.

Energy (and water and food) consumption at US levels is not a "basic necessity", it is an absurd and completely unnecessary waste. Apart from any arguments about growth, it is just obscene.

Now I don't get your argument. You say that a few people dying from radiation is such a catastrophe that we need to go massively overboard on our safety standards. On the other hand, millions dead in food riots doesn't seem to phase you.

No, I'm saying that your reasoning is sensible, simple, and, unfortunately, completely wrong. If only things were as simple as you think they are: people are hungry, so you produce more food to feed them, problem solved.

But populations and consumption adjust to resources: we create more available and they grow. You end up facing a worse problem when you are done than when you started. What needs to be fixed is the influence of available resources on growth and consumption.

A good start towards that goal is to stop growing. Not only does that stop the problem from getting bigger and bigger, it also takes away the illusion that if we just grow a little more, our problems will be solved. Once that illusion is gone, people can perhaps start thinking about making the necessary hard choices.

It's like highways: building more doesn't reduce congestion, it actually makes it worse.

Oh, this will happen without taxation. Scarcity will increase the price.

Unfortunately, our capacity to consume energy and produce carbon dioxide or nuclear waste is not limited by available resources. There is probably enough carbon in the ground to increase atmospheric carbon dioxide by orders of magnitude, and we can mine and breed nearly unlimited amounts of nuclear fuel. Sooner or later, we either die out as a species or we have to decide to stop increasing consumption. We might as well face the facts now--it only gets worse the longer we go on.

Am I being trolled here?

Not by me, but you probably are being trolled by your favorite politician and 1960's style economist.

Babushkas

[gnovos]

with one exception: Old babushkas who sell illegal produce from the sides of streets and who city officials are hesitant to crack down on

And if they are anything like the babushkas that I have met, that's a smart move... You don't mess with the old Russian grannies if you now what's good for you...

Bananas are radioactive too!

[helix400]

Ever heard that Bananas are a great source of Potassium? Well, that means bananas are also radioactive. Since bananas have has high levels of Potassiam, and since one of Potassium's common isotopes is radioactive...Bingo! Radioactive fruit!

I didn't believe it at first, until we left our physics class, ran down to the cafeteria, grabbed a banana, peeled it, and stuck a gieger counter to it. Sure enough, it had double the amount of normal background radiation!

Although its only alpha radiation (the least harmful of the three), its still fun to tell environmentalists that they get nuked more every year from bananas than they do from nuclear power plants.

Life imitates movies...

[TFloore]

Now why does this remind me of the town entry/market scene from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome ???

Admittedly, that was water, not mushrooms, but it is still much too close not to be amusing.

(Can you tell I didn't read the article?)

Friend almost got killed by radioactive thyme

[SysKoll]

A friend of mine lived in Provence (Southern France). His mom used to cook with a lot of thyme (an aromatic herb) collected from her garden.

The French denied that the radioactive clouds emitted by the Chernobyl explosions ever crossed the border (that ole' Maginot line is vairee effective, Monsieur!). The French government never sent any serious warning.

My friend developed a thyroid cancer. He now sports a beautiful throat scar but he's alive. The surgeon's professional opinion is that thyme and other aromatics concentrate radioisotopes, and that eating stuff grown in a Provence garden from 1986 to 1990 or so was asking for trouble. He said he had already seen a lot of case and had never been so busy with new thyroid cancer cases.

Curiously, right after the Chernobyl events, the French government reclassified Geiger counters as restricted military items unavailable to civilians...

So as you can see, the French managed to keep a lid on truth even better than the Soviets. The sad fact is that while the babushkas were controlled in Moscow, nobody in France had sent a warning about checking certain crops for radiations.

The truth is not going to be easy to unearth in that case because the subject is highly political.

-- SysKoll