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EPA Says Higher Radiation Levels Pose 'No Harmful Health Effect' (bloomberg.com)
Readers share a report: In the event of a dirty bomb or a nuclear meltdown, emergency responders can safely tolerate radiation levels equivalent to thousands of chest X-rays, the Environmental Protection Agency said in new guidelines that ease off on established safety levels. The EPA's determination sets a level ten times the drinking water standard for radiation recommended under President Barack Obama. It could lead to the administration of President Donald Trump weakening radiation safety levels, watchdog groups critical of the move say. "It's really a huge amount of radiation they are saying is safe," said Daniel Hirsch, the retired director of the University of California, Santa Cruz's program on environmental and nuclear policy. "The position taken could readily unravel all radiation protection rules." The change was included as part of EPA "guidance" on messaging and communications in the event of a nuclear power plant meltdown or dirty bomb attack. The FAQ document, dated September 2017, is part of a broader planning document for nuclear emergencies, and does not carry the weight of federal standards or law.
This has been debated for a long time. It's a question of whether the data from higher exposures can be correctly extrapolated to lower doses using the Linear No Threshold model.
When the neutered Secretary of State says diplomacy will continue with North Korea until the first bomb drops, and the EPA comes out with revised radiation levels that ups the ante from before, I start to worry.
The policy makers must be the 1st to respond to such a disaster.
We'll find out very quickly if they believe they did the right thing.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
If you voted for the party of less regulation. Yes, there's a lot of silly laws on the books, but the really silly ones are ignored by everyone. When it comes time to cut regulations these are the ones that get cut.
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There is no more EPA. It's gone. This article has no meaning and should be filtered out as noise.
Maybe i'm just paranoid (most likely) but...does this look like preparing the public for a planned nuclear war?
This is the kind of thing you put out so people aren't afraid to enter dangerous areas when they will die and have shorter life spans later.
Let's not bullshit here. This is about Trump's effort to get rid of every single thing Obama ever did.
Trump is your racist, senile uncle. With nuclear codes.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The discussion is about a few statements buried deep inside the pamphlet, "Protective Action Questions & Answers for Radiological and Nuclear Emergencies", which is not a "guideline" or any kind of regulation setting radiation standards: https://www.epa.gov/sites/prod...
The statement is on page 18, in the section "55. What are millirem (mrem) and millisieverts (mSv)?"
"According to radiation safety experts, radiation exposures of 5–10 rem (5,000–10,000 mrem or 50–100 mSv) usually result in no harmful health effects, because radiation below these levels is a minor contributor to our overall cancer risk."
.. followed by repeating the same statement in the same words on the next page, in section 57. Will people who have been exposed to the radiation get cancer?
"There is clear evidence that high doses of radiation can raise your risk of cancer. Although cancer has been associated with high doses of radiation received over short periods of time, the cancers usually do not appear for many years, even decades.
According to radiation safety experts, radiation exposures of 5–10 rem (5,000–10,000 mrem or 50–100 mSv) usually result in no harmful health effects, because radiation below these levels is a minor contributor to our overall cancer risk.
And then repeating it in exactly the same words in the next page over again: 60. Are people at risk for radiation poisoning or sickness?
Radiation sickness is an illness from short-term exposure to a large amount of radiation. In the United States, dose is measured in units called millirem (mrem). The international unit is the millisievert (mSv). According to radiation safety experts, radiation exposures of 5–10 rem (5,000–10,000 mrem or 50–100 mSv) usually result in no harmful health effects, because radiation below these levels is a minor contributor to our overall cancer risk.
Safety recommendations are designed to keep your dose as low as possible.
It takes a large dose of radiation—more than 75 rem (75,000 mrem or 750 mSv)—in a short amount of time (usually minutes to hours) to cause immediate health effects, such as acute radiation sickness.
But these are not guidelines, and not even proposed guidelines. The numbers seem to be consistent with health effects stated in other sources, e.g., http://www.radiationanswers.or... or http://www.radiationanswers.or... :
* 10 rem received in a short period or over a long period is safe—we don’t expect immediate observable health effects, although your chances of getting cancer might be very slightly increased.
* 100 rem received in a short time can cause observable health effects from which your body will likely recover, and 100 rem received in a short time or over many years will increase your chances of getting cancer.
This is the exact same recommendation the EPA has made since 1992, and we're seeing the exact same response now as it got the first time it was suggested.
Chronic vs. acute exposure. A couple of hundred millirems per week may not be as bad as a few milirems from an alpha particle for dozens of years for kids playing in the basement.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The existing limits are pretty low in a lot of ways, because they're calibrated for maximum safety. There's also thresholds that seem to move from 'Long term small risk, body seems to handle pretty well' to 'short term damage, long term massive risk' to 'short term massive damage' pretty sharply - you can be pretty normal for a while, then have a large shift in risk.
As such, I'm not sure this itself is a bad thing - emergency responders almost certainly can handle elevated levels over normal with minimal health risks for the *duration of a rescue operation*. I'm just not happy it's coming out in a 'gut regulations' period, because emergency responders aren't going to *live* in those areas, and the nuance is unlikely to be communicated effectively.
Pensive stare.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If you voted for the party of less regulation. Yes, there's a lot of silly laws on the books, but the really silly ones are ignored by everyone. When it comes time to cut regulations these are the ones that get cut.
This discussion came up about airport X-ray machines years ago, and sparked a debate about exposure safety.
There appears to be a linear relation between amount of exposure and number of cancers(*), but only for rather excessive levels of radiation. The debate centers on whether there is a "cutoff", where any exposure less than some amount is negligible.
It's hard to get quantitative information about this because the exposure levels are small, and the results won't be known for decades. IIRC, my calculations at the time indicated that 10 or 20 new cases of cancer *might* be caused by 9 billion airline flights. (Those 10-20 new cancers is not nothing, I'm just pointing out that finding the correlation in all that noise is all but impossible. Attention paid to more likely health threats would be a better way to spend effort and resources**.)
The prevailing opinion is that the body deals with and repairs all sorts of damage in it's day-to-day operation, so that damage smaller than a set level will get swept up along with all the other repairs.
Strangely, there is actually no menace in this recent decision, and the "party of less regulation" is doing what appears to be the right thing.
(*) I once wrote an article about airport X-ray systems, which required a bunch of research.
(**) Interestingly, that was then and this is now. Since everyone has to register to take a plane flight, we now have about 15 years of data that could be mined here. Take a cohort of plane travellers and divide them into 2 groups: people who take many flights per year, versus people who take few flights per year, and compare their rates of cancer later in life, against a similar cohort taken from the general population.
This is like a scene out of Repo Man, J Frank Parnell:
Ever been to Utah? Ra-di-a-tion. Yes, indeed. You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense. Everybody could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year. They ought to have them, too. When they canceled the project it almost did me in. One day my mind was full to bursting. The next day - nothing. Swept away. But I'll show them. I had a lobotomy in the end.
Isn't that the same organization that in 2005 was found to have suppressed a study it commissioned by Harvard University which contradicted its position on mercury controls, which were later exposed as not following the Clean Air Act?
And, in 2007, California sued for its refusal to allow it and 16 other states to raise fuel economy standards for new cars.
And, in 2008, the Union of Concerned Scientists said that more than half of the nearly 1,600 EPA staff scientists who responded online to a detailed questionnaire reported they had experienced incidents of political interference in their work.
Not saying the EPA is corrupt, but their word isn't gospel either.
You lefties are pro science, right?
From the PDF:
What does a physics lab have to say on the topic?
http://sbhepnt.physics.sunysb.edu/~rijssenbeek/RadiationSafety.html
tl; dr version:
ZOMG! The EPA is saying there is no reason to panic over radiation doses less than half the dose that causes effects in your body that medical science is able to detect!
See that "Preview" button?
Most, if not all, mandatory radon inspections are only mandatory because the lender wants it. There are, as far as I know, no laws requiring radon inspection. The lender wants the inspections because even the appearance of a problem can drastically lower the property value.
A couple of hundred millirems per week may not be as bad as a few milirems from an alpha particle for dozens of years for kids playing in the basement.
Wait a second, just how long did you keep your kids in the basement? If you keep someone in there for dozens of years then they definitely aren't kids any more... And you're a bad person
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I would think that there would be a treasure trove of actual data related to those 2 events.
Witness BitZtream getting pwned!... twice.....three times!
Look, reactor fallout and dirty bombs are not quite the same.
The main thing is this: incidental exposure in an area with rain is only that from direct contact and ingestion, either via air (masks) or water/food.
You can flush your system with drinkable water, on a residential level, from the water stored in your hot water heater and in your toilet reservoirs, as well as anything in your fridge or freezer.
It's only from crops grown or water collected after the incident that you have a risk. Shower if exposed, change clothes exposed. Don't eat local products grown after the time of exposure.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I don't believe half of what my government tells me.
Perhaps they are his neighbours kids? ...
And he somehow simply forgot
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Trump will start the nukes!
You're still paying for the EPA, and they are still spending money on important things which I'm sure must be in the interests of the country. We know those things are important, because they're so sensitive.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
"some mutilation is ok, even if all it does is damage the DNA and children birthed to exposed individual."
they don't have a good way to track DNA damage. ones children can have defects in structures that only slightly changes them.
no radiation is safe radiation.
the republicans theory is their kids won't be as impacted and yours don't matter at all so who gives a shit how much radiation exposure happens.
https://www.trumpsweapon.com/
No harmful health effects at all. None. I mean, you will eventually get cancer but LOOK AT THE FUNNY MONKEY!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Think about it. It is inevitable that some city gets a dirty bomb event. The financial consequences could destroy the national economy. From the federal government's point of view importance attaches to keeping the city, the insurance companies and the banks solvent. It matters little that the people die off early from all kinds of wretched diseases so they simply lie to keep the people functioning as they were before the event knowing that the deaths and losses will occur over decades and be less of a hazard to the system as a whole. If you don't believe the government would do that look at Puerto Rico and the US virgin Islands today. These people are being murdered by an absurd type of relief effort. Puerto Rico already had a huge problem. The nation is bankrupt and has been disallowed declaration of bankruptcy by the US courts. In order to pay their huge debt these people would be severely taxed and they are poor to begin with. As they are US citizens and fully able to migrate into the US proper any sane Puerto Rican would come to the mainland leaving less and less Puerto Ricans to pay the billions in debt. Now on top of that we have a hurricane that destroyed the nation. So they need many more billions to get up and running. That means huge taxes so why the heck would anyone stay in Puerto Rico? Obviously bankruptcy is one very good answer. Or simply abandon the island and have everyone come to the US. Meanwhile the US almost seems to be setting them up for mass executions by a very slow and foolish relief effort. Frankly I like Puerto Rican people. They are colorful, vibrant and generally hard working. I have also found them to be quite polite and humble. we could learn a lot from these good people.
If you keep someone in there for dozens of years
Keep him there? We can't get him to leave.
Have gnu, will travel.
what does this have to do with anything? I don't recall either party saying much about air port x-rays except maybe some more research should be done. Am I just missing something? Both parties pushed for more x-raying in the wake of 9/11 anyway.
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among the kneejerk 'hur durr Trump sux' comments.
How's life in the hypocrite lane?
Only makes me stronger.
Signed, Bruce Banner
Now I can finally go spear fishing in the Chernobyl basin.
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
Wait a second, just how long did you keep your kids in the basement? If you keep someone in there for dozens of years then they definitely aren't kids any more...
24 years.
And you're a bad person
Pfft you sound like my jury. I'm not all bad. I even left 3 of her newborn children down there with her to keep her company.
I'm reasoning this out from first principles here, so if anyone has actual knowledge, I presume they'll correct me.
It's not that simple. Acute exposure isn't entirely different from chronic exposure, there are large areas of overlap at low levels of total dose. E.g., induced single mutations happen in both, and can lead to cancer from either.
There is some sense in which acute exposure is less damaging for a given (low) amount of total radiation. e.g. it's more likely to kill a cell by inducing multiple mutations. And, of course, multiple mutations in different cells are more likely to overwhelm the immune system in the case of acute exposure...but at low levels one would expect multiple mutations to be common even with acute exposure.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Not to mention that alpha particles are destructive but have essentially no penetration. An alpha emitter near your hand isn't doing nearly as much damage as an alpha emitter in your lungs, which is where radon goes.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Hyperbole? We've got hyperbole.
The US produces the best hyperbole in the world, and we're proud of it! It's part of what makes America great!
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Are you willing to bet your life of it?