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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.
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.
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?
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.
Putting this in some perspective, it's something less than 20 CT scans. While that seems high, it's well within the range of what some (sick) people get. Not a great idea, but a 'tolerable' level of radiation.
Remember, these are for first responder guidelines. Not chronic exposures. First responders are at some risk of various and sundry hazards. And often first response safety considerations means balancing various issues. Sure, you can dress up in a Class A Hazmat suit but if you keel over because of heat prostration or trip over the bit of rebar you didn't see you may end up with a bunch of x-rays anyway. Being an adrenaline junkie has it's dangers.
It would, however, be nice to see if there was some sort of substantive evidence for this.
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.
Putting this in some perspective, it's something less than 20 CT scans
I really hate when CT scans are used as an example. The range of exposure is so wide and varies a lot depending on the type of scanner it is. A cardiac function CT scan on a 10 year old scanner could be 30 mSv or higher. Yet the same scan on a 2 year old scanner would be under 5 mSv. And with a newer sequence from the last 6 months could be as low as 1 mSv. An angiogram from a few years ago could be 16 mSv, but are well under 1 mSv on a modern scanner. There are many scans that are done these days that are at .2 mSv.
It also depends on what body part is being scanned. The exposure in the extremities are different than the head or thorax. The age of a patient is also a big factor. hitting an 85 year old with 10 mSv is a hell of a lot different than a 6 month old.
Radiation exposure is well understand and extrapolated, and has been for years.
The public risk perception of radiation is so far from reality, it could possibly make us do stupid things.
Your perception of the risk from radiation is so far from reality, you've simplified the model to the point of being useless.
That's been my experience of your posts, that all of the knowledge gathered since the 1950s just doesn't exist. You don't understand :
Then you:
There is a reason the NRC uses ALARA, figuring out this stuff is complicated and the easiest thing to do so your brain doesn't explode from thinking about it is to keep the potential risk of exposure ultra conservative.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.