Elevated Radiation Claimed At Tokyo 2020 Olympic Venues

An anonymous reader writes "A citizens' group in Tokyo claims to have found elevated levels of radioactivity at 39 sporting venues earmarked for the 2020 Olympic Games. Expert and organizers are cautious about the findings but see no problem, as the levels do not pose an immediate threat to human health. From the article: '"It is difficult to have this debate unless we know for sure whether this radiation is from Fukushima or whether it is naturally occurring background radiation," said Pieter Franken, founder of the Japan office of the environmental monitoring organization Safecast."

Comments

Fukushima or naturally occurring

[TurtleBay]

'"It is difficult to have this debate unless we know for sure whether this radiation is from Fukushima or whether it is naturally occurring background radiation" -Pieter Franken. I always find this sentiment a little odd. People care too much about if the radiation is measurably above background radiation or what the source of the radiation is. What they should care about is if the radiation is at a dangerous level. We have gotten better at measuring this stuff, so just because we can measure (very small) increases in radiation from Fukushima doesn't mean we should change our lives around it. Anything that is on the same magnitude as background radiation is pretty much safe. For example, you get increased radiation from flying in a plane because the atmosphere is much thinner. Also, natural radiation is much higher near the poles than near the equator, but nobody gets upset about this because it is "natural" like kale.

So we can't have a debate than

[DarkOx]

It is difficult to have this debate unless we know for sure whether this radiation is from Fukushima or whether it is naturally occurring background radiation

For anyone considering going then you can't know, and at this point it matters little what anyone says. There have been so many denials, and incorrect information put out by TEPCO and the government there how could anyone trust anything they say now?

OMG! The possibility!

[Okian Warrior]

Once again, possibility is not the same as probability.

Yes, it's possible that the elevated radiation levels will cause problems. Now, what's the risk, and what's the tradeoff between mitigating *that* risk versus mitigating some *other* risk?

Security is a tradeoff, always. The value of something is not the face value, but the face value times the probability of occurrence.

So if the probability of damage (say, the number of people getting cancer from going to the event) times the value of damage (taken informally as $1 million per human life lost, but depends on estimates and philosophy) is higher than other foreseeable risks, then we should address the problem.

Risks shouldn't be ignored, just compared to other risks. If the utility losses for other risks are higher, then we should spend our finite resources on the other risks first.

How much risk utility is embodied in this problem compared to, say dying from accidentally swallowing (and choking on) a bee?

...but journalism must sell news. I suppose someone swallowing something wouldn't be very interesting.