Slashdot Mirror
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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.
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!
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?
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.'"
If you keep someone in there for dozens of years
Keep him there? We can't get him to leave.
Have gnu, will travel.
How's life in the hypocrite lane?