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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?
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.
I would like to have seen the dosage given by using the backscatter machine at an airport listed.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
Agreed. As a physician I am well aware that the body has compensation mechanisms for virtually everything, and they work fine so long as you don't overwhelm those mechanism (it usually always boils down to the rate of reaction of some enzyme or other). But was trying not to get too technical.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
12mSv/h is slightly more than one red square, no where near an orange one. This makes the highest level of radiation detected, in the cloud of vented gas from inside the containment vessel about 30,000 times less than those at chyernobyl, and only for a very very brief period involving very short half life elements.
The radiation level has since fallen back way down, especially since managing to resubmurge the spent fuel. The reaction has also slowed to about 1/2000th of it's original rates in the reactors, making a melt down extremely unlikely at this point.
This is actually completely wrong. The Sievert is based on the Gray, which is defined in terms of J/kg. For a fixed mass, it's J, energy. It makes no sense to say "exposed to 1 Sievert for 1 second". You would have to say "exposed to 1 Sievert per second for 1 second".
>>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.
You're absolutely right to be annoyed at the media for getting it so wrong.
But even the Slashdot summary is disingenuous:
"1 Sievert will make you sick, many more will kill you, however, even small doses cumulatively increase cancer risk."
There's no evidence for the LNT (linear no threshold) model for radiation exposure, other than people doing math and plotting a line down into the low-exposure ranges. All the epidemiological studies have shown much lower cancer incidence rates than the LNT would predict, indicating that there is a thresholding effect at work at low doses.
This actually makes a *huge* difference when it comes to cleanup of radioactive material. Something like $200 billion worth of difference.
That's why I'm interested in people actually, you know, testing this sort of stuff in the laboratory, like these guys: http://www.orionint.com/projects/ullre.cfm
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.