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EPA Makes a Rad Decision
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.'"
Radiation Chart
pay for by mr bruns nuclear power co
http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2012/03/10/fukushimas-refugees-are-victims-of-irrational-fear-not-radiation/
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
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.
The truth shall set you free!
"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."
[End Of Line]
future proofing the failure litigation.
This isn't Fark
Mmmmm. Picocurries.
Rad, dude!
That's totally tubular, dudes!
I am officially gone from
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.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
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.
Ever read Physics for Future Presidents? It's a good source of scientific information that should influence public policy more than it currently does.
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
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.
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.
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.
41K is stable, and it's 6.7% of Earth's potassium
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
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.
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 iodide on a regular basis, which isn't something that the general populace is likely to be doing. It's also not typical for the general populace to be wearing protective gear either.
And lastly, it makes a huge difference what kind of radiation you're dealing with and what the duration of exposure is.
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.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
What about the hard UVs given off by CFL backlights? They have the same exact problem with CRTs once the phosphor layer starts to break down.
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.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Maybe we should go have a talk to the FDA about "Radioactive materials Americans eat each year."
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
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 containment make any questions about developing thyroid cancer a few years down the road a rather trivial concern?
Incorrect. Sieverts are specifically designed to account for the differences between radiation types with regards to biological effects. 1 Sv has the same biological impact regardless of whether it was caused by alpha, beta or gamma radiation. If the radiation is given in Grays, then you need to apply correction factors depending on radiation type.
nor did we take potassium iodide supplements.
How do you know that the Navy wasn't just dumping into your chow?
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.
C14 as a beta decay isotope in my body, has nearly no effect on my body. The water in my cells will capture it already.
Holy shit, I hope you never are put in charge of anything related to radiation safety, as this is so wrong to the point of being dangerous if someone had to make a decision based on that. And I was the radiation safety officer for a previous project I worked on...
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.
Oops, you are right here.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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?
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.
...
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.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
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.
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?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
We'd all live to be 200 years old if not for that nefarious C-14!
Unfortunately Fukushima wasn't exactly a measured, controlled dose.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
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 bombed at the 6th of september in 1945? There surely are thousands. Likely contradicting each other and claiming it was not bombed at all, or was bombed at the 5th and not the 6th and more others that show that in a parallel universe the bomb was deflected into subspace and in another one that the bomb did not ignite. So the japs sold it to germany and then it was dropped on a small town in Oregon with 300 inhabitants of which unfortunately 35,000 died (due to overkill battle rules).
ROFL what an idiot can you be? Or did you simple miss to add 3 more zeroes to your number? Then I apologize.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Yes, eating certain radioisotopes is dangerous. Some isotopes concentrate in areas of the body and emit radiation that is much more harmful when it is in the body (alpha radiation).
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. 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 (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.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
Since radioactive materials have been actively released into the environment for well over half-a-century, current background levels may not be a good measure of the actual, natural background levels.
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.
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 measurable amount.
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 - I got the majority of the total dosage I received in one night when the job required me to run into the (shutdown) reactor compartment for a couple minutes of every ten minutes all night long).
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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 include any special ingredients (unless you count the occasional bit of cook-spit....)
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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?
If the K-40 didn't get us first...
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?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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
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.
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 late victims of the bombs. There are thousands of medical articles about this topic.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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 labeled "White phosphorous victim" (true cause of death being shot in the gut)
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 naturally aborted when it dies.
That's the probable reason behind the "no birth defects" study, there was actually a huge birth defect within a few days of the bomb being an aborted bloody mass.
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 help them. Why don't you google e.g. "black rain" or simply read one of the many world literature prices winning japanese books about the topic? You easy find a few hundret books written by eye wittnesses that also cover the decades after the war. Books like crimes or love stories, not scientific books or research papers, books that start 1940 and cover till 1975 or what ever. There are plenty.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Absorbed in the organic LCD cells, if there is a cfl in there at all, most shit is led, far as i can tell.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.