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A Handy Radiation Dose Chart From XKCD
An anonymous reader points out Randall Munroe's latest contribution to public health awareness, a "chart of how much ionizing radiation a person can absorb from various sources, compared visually. 1 Sievert will make you sick, many more will kill you, however, even small doses cumulatively increase cancer risk." It's a good way to think about the difference between Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Fascinating, the mention of bananas was smart, since there's something known as Banana Equivalent Dose
An additional useful chart can be found here, in a slightly more readable and intelligible format:
http://eq.wide.ad.jp/files_en/110315houshasen_mext_en.pdf
Not as all-inclusive as Randall's work, but still good.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
So what you are saying is that XKCD did more research and analysis for a web-comic than the 24 hour news networks do for a story?
I'm sorry, but the link above on the equivalent yearly radiation in Tokyo would only be correct if you were outdoors 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.
Uh, not rude? I'm pretty sure calling your opponent a fuckwit qualifies as rude. To say nothing of the rest of the comment.
Being rude doesn't matter from a standpoint of factual correctness, but a person can have the facts of their side and still come off looking like a raving lunatic when they write an entire paragraph where every third word is "cock".
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
There are so many radiation units out there and people keep using them without regard to what they really mean. It's nice that you've got your Sieverts covered. Now you'll have to learn about Grays, Curies, Becquerels, Rads, Rems, and Roentgens. Here's a handy conversion chart.
It's a good way to think about the difference between Chernobyl and Fukushima.
No. It is not a good way to do that. It would have been if it had included measures like "Ten minutes next to the reactor core of Fukushima after partial meltdown" or "Dose from spending an hour on the grounds at the Fukushima plant in 2036". I'm not saying Fukushima is anywhere near as bad as Chernobyl, but if you want to compare them this chart is not what you need.
I found one source that said firefighters had radiation levels of 27 mSV after a 13 hour operation (presumably to cool down the reactor). Which doesn't seem to me to be a severe healthrisk after looking at the chart provided. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm vastly annoyed with the media, given how they talk you'd think people were losing their hair and growing skin lesions.
The Sievert is a measure of ACCUMULATED dose. Time is a factor. Therefore being exposed to 1 Sievert for a second (the real unit behind the sievert is the J/s, which is equivalent to Watts) is the same as being exposed to 1 milisievert for 1000 seconds, or 1 microsievert for 10^6 seconds.
This is also why many measurements are done on a "per hour" basis. 400 milisieverts per hour (near the pool between reactors 3-4) is not harmful to you if you are going to be there for 5 minutes. If you stay there for 2.5 hours, however, you could experience signs of acute radiation sickness.
I find it laughable, however, how the press a) fails to understand this and b) has obvious trouble converting between micro and mili.
Finally one must bear in mind that radionuclides will decay over time (Iodine-131 being the main culprit here, has a half life of 8 days). So in 5 half lives (40 days), most of it will be gone. And also that the chronic health risk of radiation is usually overestimated, especially for such small doses as currently seen in Japan. It's statistical roulette, just like smoking. It just takes one cigarette to unleash the chain of events that will eventually lead to cancer. However the odds of it being the cigarette you are currently smoking are quite small. But if you smoke all your life, you're likely to buy the winning ticket eventually. The same with radiation. There are still living survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and these people were exposed to far more (and more harmful) radiation - gamma rays vs. beta particles. And yet not that many of them have "grown a third arm". Yes, there have been cancer deaths, but considering the population exposed, it wasn't all that much.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This is not an incredibly informative measurement, it would be more useful to learn of the radiation levels in the evacuated areas (10km & 20km, last I heard) as well as the cautioned areas (30km, stay indoors).
SYS 64738 NO CARRIER
I would like to have seen the dosage given by using the backscatter machine at an airport listed.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
I prefer hyronalin myself. Iodine is such an old school treatment...
Yeah, whoosh and all - but Iodine is not a treatment, its prophylactic.
Fandroids hate facts.
Coal fired powers stations emit more radioactivity than nuclear power stations and also release greenhouse gases and ash. We should be shutting all of these as soon as possible to protect the Earth and its people. The deaths due to coal mining annually exceed all deaths in over fifty years of nuclear power generation.
A number line would have done so much more.
The thing that very few people are mentioning is:
The exposure occurring over the days and weeks.
Not everyone has an x-ray every day.
The Japanese ministry is suppressing both the radiation figures for Fukushima and the areal photos recently taken.
The atom is an amazing thing because it makes people lie so much?
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Seeing the wild claim I have seen on various network, and web news aggregator, I would say anybody researching *a bit* did more research than news networks...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Or read this article about how the US coverage from nearly all outlets (not just Fox) is sensationalist, late, and often just wrong?
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/JNlPwKP6WAs/taking_stock_3.php
Example: "This has not been just Fox News, but also CNN, MSNBC, ABC, and even the New York Times to differing degrees. They get the reactors mixed up or report information that is simply wrong (e.g., writing that the TEPCO workers had fully abandoned the effort to control the plant because of radiation levels when TEPCO had only withdrawn some non-essential personnel). They are perpetually late, continuing to report things the Japanese media had shown to be wrong or different the day before. They are woefully selective, bringing out just the sensational elements ("toxic clouds" over Tokyowhen in fact radiation in Tokyo now is actually less than that in LA on some days). They are misleading (implying for instance that the dumping of water from the air was some last ditch effort to cool the core, when it was just an effort to replenish the water in the spent rod poolswhich are now full in reactor 3 and back to normal temperature)."
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I think one major cause of nucleophobia is that doses of a millionth of anything dangerous or less are easily measurable
Negligible doses of most every poison is always around, but are unmeasurable. Radiation radiates its presence and is observed, reported and terrifying.
I'm fond of Rad-X. Rad-Away is nice and all, but an ounce of prevention etc.
Read your own friggin' articles and stop spreading FUD.
"Yukio Edano, Japan's chief Cabinet secretary, confirmed at a news conference Saturday that milk produced by a farm in Fukushima Prefecture near a crippled power plant and spinach from the neighboring Ibaraki Prefecture were found to be tainted with radiation levels SLIGHTLY [emphasis mine] above that set by the government.
However, Edano said, the contaminated food posed no immediate threat to human health. The public should remain calm, he urged.
Referring to the milk, he said, "drinking it for a year would only expose consumers to the radiation equivalent of one medical CT scan.""
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Most of the casualties from Chernobyl (4000 to 8000 fatalities and counting) were from Thyroid cancer.
Check your facts! 4000 cases of thyroid cancer and only 9 fatalities, because it is 99% curable (I think I read somewhere else 15 deaths).
You're contradicting yourself. If the Sievert already has units of a rate (J/s), then the 400 mSv per hour you mention is a double rate (energy/time^2), some kind of energetic acceleration, which doesn't make sense here. Your second paragraph is correct, but it contradicts your first.
As others have noted, the units for a Sievert are J/kg, not J/s. This is a very important distinction. An accumulated does requires these units, as J/s is a rate, and then you have to know how long a person is exposed, i.e. there is no accumulation. An accumulated dose implies that if you receive 1 mSv, that is all one needs to know: there is no time scale involved. It is a certain amount of total radiation received. Correcting your first paragraph, 1 Sv received in 1 second is (approximately) the same as 1 Sv received in 1000 seconds and as 1 Sv received in one million seconds. Sieverts are therefore a useful measure for directly determining the effects the radiation will have on a person.
So in fact Randall's image is accurate, unless there is some minor error in it that hasn't yet been discovered. Given your own misunderstanding of the situation, I hope the press's confusion is a little less inexplicable. You still come to the correct conclusion, which they often do not, but sometimes, science is hard.
Being rude doesn't matter from a standpoint of factual correctness, but a person can have the facts of their side and still come off looking like a raving lunatic when they write an entire paragraph where every third word is "cock".
Surely a limited data set but it seems to me that people who swear a lot when trying to present an argument often miss or lack a lot of information even though the information they do have may be correct. Swearing can be telling as to which part of the brain is being used and how frequently. It can also affect the person reading/hearing the word in the same region. From HowStuffWorks.
Language processing is a "higher" brain function and takes place in the cerebral cortex.
Emotion and instinct are "lower" brain functions and take place deep inside the brain.
Many studies suggest that the brain processes swearing in the lower regions, along with emotion and instinct. Scientists theorize that instead of processing a swearword as a series of phonemes, or units of sound that must be combined to form a word, the brain stores swear words as whole units [ref]. So, the brain doesn't need the left hemisphere's help to process them. Swearing specifically involves:
The limbic system, which also houses memory, emotion and basic behavior. The limbic system also seems to govern vocalizations in primates and other animals, and some researchers have interpreted some primate vocalizations as swearing.
The basal ganglia, which play a large role in impulse control and motor functions.
I prefer medical marijuana
I understand your point, but Randall has a specialized audience who is suited to absorbing more information than "someone on the street" I have to say I thought it was brilliantly executed and easily grok'ed. Someone else posted links to other graphs that were pyramidal in shape that were easier to understand and yet somehow misleading due to the logarithmic scale - how do you communicate that to the general public? I suppose comparing it to the richter scales, although every time this comes up on /. the factor of 10 vs. 31,000 times argument comes up so even that is commonly misleading.
you are in a twisty maze of different passages.
Apples and oranges. Those complaining that it's too simplified are intellectuals and nerds - exactly the audience this isn't intended for. Those complaining it's too complex are those interested in the graphic actually being useful for education and information.
Here's an idea - you're an elitist idiot. You don't want anyone educated because that means they might actually want to take part in our representative democracy. You want to hand this country over to a self appointed body empowered to make decisions for the rest of us.
Piss right the hell off. I'm a citizen of this country and have every right to participate in this discussion.
Apples and oranges. Those complaining that it's too simplified are intellectuals and nerds - exactly the audience this isn't intended for. Those complaining it's too complex are those interested in the graphic actually being useful for education and information.
Option 3 : those complaining it's too complex are beyond help from a simple chart and need to get a better basic education. A chart that has 3 settings "Panic" "Tremble" and "Pie" would not exactly help educating -- it would just be a command-chart not even giving you the option to come to your own conclusions.
Here's an idea - you're an elitist idiot. You don't want anyone educated because that means they might actually want to take part in our representative democracy. You want to hand this country over to a self appointed body empowered to make decisions for the rest of us.
You love hyperbole, don't you ...
The facts remain, in any given field there are people more qualified than yourself to give advice and implement useful solutions. Good leaders (elected representatives) recognize this and get the best advice they can, instead of only what they want to hear, or "advice" from people patently unqualified to give any on the field in question.
And yes, when it comes to a nuclear meltdown scenario, I want the elite of nuclear power research to have much more of a say in what should happen next than an incompetent moron whose suggestions would just as soon cause supercriticality as being utterly worthless. While even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes, I don't want that chance to be taken. Likewise for other fields I am not an expert in.
There is moderation in this process since the decisions get made by elected officials. If they are any good, they will heed good advice.
Piss right the hell off. I'm a citizen of this country and have every right to participate in this discussion.
First of all, you are not a citizen of Japan.
Second, you have a right to speak, but no right to be heard.
Third, if you decide to speak, and if you get the ear of somebody who can effect changes in policy, you damn well better present a coherent case. In order to do that, you need to have researched the topic at hand. A "gut feeling" based on some two-bit tabloid and a moron talking head on TV is not research. Anything else is irresponsible.
Given your statements thus far, I'm inclined to be disinterested in anything you have to say. You may be right on something, but I don't like the chances. I'd rather get my advice from somebody level-headed.
And you're the one throwing out the "elitist" accusations?
Could bonding play a part in the appearance that blue collar workers swear more than white collar workers?
I think you may have hit the nail right on the head. From my teens until my mid-20's, I worked back and forth between various construction and factory jobs (mason, carpenter, machinist and assembly line worker) until the late age of 26, I enlisted in the Navy and became an Electronics Technician and post-Navy I work as a Systems Analyst/Systems Integration Specialist, anyway, I install and troubleshoot various electro-mechanical systems that are usually connected to PC's/networks or other computing equipment that most people wouldn't think of as computers, most contract houses sell me as a "Multi-skilled technician," so I tend to be a striped collar worker and interface well between blue collar and white collar workers.
To quote Bill Cosby, "Now, I told you THAT story to tell you THIS one." I just figured a little background would lend more credence to the following:
It does seem that there is more camaraderie with blue collar workers where a workers position is very well defined and their advancement in position is primarily based on experience/skill level as opposed say non-professional office workers (the bulk of which seem to be fairly interchangeable document processors.) In the blue collar environment, there is a noticeable skill level difference between a tradesman with 2/5/10/20 years of experience so that there is less politicking needed for advancement in position, making for a more informal and less guarded-tongue environment, besides the addition of the common enemy syndrome (us workers vs. "THE MAN.") Where in white collar office workers there is little difference between someone who has been processing documents for 5 years or 20 years, so most advancement, say to management, requires verbal jousting and politics (not even counting those who interface with customers or children.) I would say the same goes with enlisted and commissioned service members.
Forgive me for being overly simplistic, I'm just trying to be as concise as I can make it. FAIL.
loose: not fitting closely or tightly != lose: to suffer the deprivation of
Ann Coulter has her own website. Why don't you link to directly to her, to attribute what she says, and not to the website of one of her political enemies.
It should be trivial for you to do that, because, well, you're supposedly citing her as an example of something. Not just trumped up nonsense. Right?