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

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.