Posted on 08/26/2013 7:34:30 PM PDT by Errant
They don’t need lead cans; mercury is a better shield than lead.
dummmie me ;o)
And of course, potassium 40 is harmless to humans compared with radioactive cesium. Naturally. So comparisons with bananas are always meaningless.
WHen I experimented with Cesium-137 long ago, I used Rads. THe Director of Isoptope therapy in a Japanese institute postulated that the reason Tepco and the Japanese government kept releasing information in beq’s re foods consumed (school lunches, beef, fish, rice, wheat, tea leaves), it was intentional, used to make it hard to understand and relate the impact on human health.
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You said:
(I can calculate human exposure if I know how much was ingested, but I’d need a while with a whiteboard to figure out the body dose for a fish swimming in a given concentration of contaminated water.)
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Thus far, standard dosimetry calculations commonly displayed on FR are useless in that they do not take into account what isotope is involved (aside from energy level). That’s how the old banana routine gets employed. But there are vast differences among the ways that different isotopes affect health - the dosimetry equations are blind to these differences.
Not a good article. Is the author unaware that about 300+ tons of contaminated water is flushing into the ocean daily? Since the water table exists and tepco has been flooding the area under the reactors for over two years now, and people have been wondering “Gee, where does all that water go” - that contaminated water has been flowing into the ocean daily for 2.5 years. That they tried creating an impermeable wall between the contaminated ground water and the ocean but then the terrain supporting the damaged reactors and the sfp began to liquify and may still further destabilize? That strontium is only one of 131 isotopes that the IAEA reported at the Fukushima site? That Medical science has repeatedly shown since the 1950’s that there is no safe dose. That Fukushima is sending isotopes into the air, has done so and will continue to do so for who knows how long? That dose is cummulative and as it is added to our food, water, and air as well as physical surroundings, our dose continues to aggregate? Does the author of the linked article know that re chernobyl, it was determined that 2beq’s per gallon of drinking water elevated the bladder cancer rate? Mmmmmmmmm....no. Just another article indicating people are “hysterics” if they care what TEPCO and the nuclear industry are do. Writing about it, discussing it etc. are lumped into one pile and deemed fear mongering. The nuke industry wants silence.
DO you really not understand the difference between ingested dose and background external dose? Do you not understand the concept of “cumulative” dose? That money quote is just the nuke power industry raking in money. Cost cutting measures and national pride continue to jeopardize the site of three nuclear melt-throughs. The Russians are now volunteering to help, probably because they remember Chernobyl - as well they might, people are still suffering by living in contaminated zones in the Ukraine. Sadly, Japan is unwilling to compensate people for contaminated homes and businesses so they have declared areas that, were they located in the Ukraine would be considered off limits for human habitation, “safe” and so people are stuck living there. Yes. Claiming that hazardous materials are within safe limits and sneering at objections to nuclear power industry incompetence are all about money.
The map I saw was tracking contaminated debris washed out to see from the Tsunami. If I come across it again, I’ll link.
“And of course, potassium 40 is harmless to humans compared with radioactive cesium.”
Not on a Bq to Bq comparison. K40 has much higher energy gammas than Cs137. K40 usually exists in very low concentrations (like in bananas and soil) because it is not too useful, but Cs137 can be found in pretty concentrated form (because it’s used in medicine and industry). Nobody takes a pile of KCl and concentrates the K40 out of it, or makes K40 in an accelerator to get a couple millicuries in one pellet. Cs137 at the concentrations that K40 is found is about as dangerous as K40, at that concentration. Cs is not retained and K40 gets flushed out as new K40 comes in. Cs137 has a much, much shorter half-life, so a given mass is more dangerous.
The health calculations do indeed consider isotope. The articles posted here generally do not. The biggest factors are half-life of the isotope and biological half-life, so K40 washes out quickly and has a long half-life. Am241 has a shorter half-life and a long time in the body and is much more dangerous biologically. I have tools, as I said, for calculating ingested and inhaled isotopes in people, but calculating body dose for a fish presents some math challenges.
I agree that most public discussions of radiological health issues lack depth and accuracy. It’s not just the posters on FR, but a deep ignorance among “journalists”, who generally never learned any math or science in their education, or have an agenda of their own (or of their bosses). Add to this the complexity of converting a concentration in bq to dosimetry in REMS after ingestion and you go beyond what “journalists” can report.
If there’s no safe dose, then why aren’t we all dead already?
I said:
“And of course, potassium 40 is harmless to humans compared with radioactive cesium.”
You replied:
Not on a Bq to Bq comparison. K40 has much higher energy gammas than Cs137.
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That’s why all the dosimetry calculations I’ve had thrown in my face are wrong. K40 has much higher energy gammas than Cs137. And according to the EPA and other sources, “human tissues are relatively transparent” to higher energy gammas. This is the Grand Canyon in the calculations I’ve been seeing. One professor I had theorized that lower energy gammas do not pass through tissues one time, possibly missing the DNA strand all together - whereas lower energy gammas are thought to Richter around in tissues, passing multiple times through cells and therefore more likely to hit and damage DNA.
Look at the energy levels of uranium - low compared with K40, right? So the first thing the dosimetry calculations do is multiply quantity times energy and obliterate medical relevance from the rest of the equation.
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You said: The biggest factors are half-life of the isotope and biological half-life, so K40 washes out quickly and has a long half-life.
I say: This is wrong. Energy level is a huge issue as is where and how long the isotope is stored. Strontium is taken up in the bones in teeth and chelating or other efforts to remove it fail. Cesium collects in the muscles and the heart is a muscle, hence the relationship to cardiac death. No calculations capture the tendency of Strontium to collect in bones and irradiate bone marrow (leukemia). Isotope exposure suppresses immune response - no calculation has shown the relative amounts of immune response suppression among isotopes. That dosimetry calculation fails to take into account medical impact.
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You said:
but calculating body dose for a fish presents some math challenges.
I say: It’s generally done by sample the tissues of the fish. 5 months after Fukushima, a San Diego marine biologist finds trace amounts of Fukushima isotopes in 13 out of 13 fish sampled. Now, with continuous dumping into the ocean for another 2 years non-stop, and further concentration of the isotopes in the food chain, it’s not unreasonable to guess that the amounts in fish are increasing. And, the dumping into the ocean will not stop - it will continue unabated because no one knows how to stop it.
There is no safe dose means that risk is proportional to exposure. Expose yourself to a little dose and increase your risk of cancer/leukemia etc. a little in proportion. Do this long term then small increases above background are compounded daily. And it’s necessary to factor in all vectors of exposure: external sources like medical xrays, dental xrays and air travel (above background exposure) and internal sources air/water food. And you need to stay perfectly healthy during exposure - that’s why people undergoing radiation treatments avoid exposing themselves to flu etc. Also, note that the young, elderly and female are more sensitive to radiation damage then the rest of the population.
A general response to irradiation is immune suppression - so someone who would have been expected to recovery from a disease might not because their immune system was busy repairing radiation damage.
Who is indifferent to increasing their risk for early dementia, cardiac death, leukemia and “a host of other illnesses and syndromes” cited by the literature? What industry should get the green light for increasing the cancer/leukemia risk world wide and do so for the forseeable future because of their incompetence?
My typos corrected below:
“One professor I had theorized that lower energy gammas pass through tissues one time, possibly missing the DNA strand all together - whereas lower energy gammas are thought to ricochet around in tissues, passing multiple times through cells and therefore more likely to hit and damage DNA.”
Well, I’ve type it wrong twice in a row.
One last time - and then I’ll resort to drawing pictures if it’s still wrong. SOrry.
“One professor I had theorized that higher energy gammas pass through tissues one time, possibly missing the DNA strand all together - whereas lower energy gammas are thought to ricochet around in tissues, passing multiple times through cells and therefore more likely to hit and damage DNA.”
He likened it to a low speed bullet bouncing around inside a shooting victim and resulting in multiple trajectories through human tissue (i.e., the Regan assassination attempt; it wasn’t high caliber but it did alot of damage) whereas a bullet fired from a high caliber rifle would be expected to pass through the body one time (fewer trajectories).
LNT has been utterly discredited, because it makes no sense. It was a mathematical shortcut for regulators that has no relation to reality.
Risk is not proportional to exposure to radiation, any more than risk is proportional to exposure to sunlight or water.
“If there’s no safe dose,”
The government and most rad health outfits use a linear, no threshold model for risk. That means that any amount of radiation carries some risk.
It scales linearly. BIER VI calculated one excess cancer death in a population of 100 exposed to 10 REM whole body, out of a background of 42 (statistically 42 out of 100 will die of cancer, expose the 100 to 10 REM and the cancer deaths become 43, everyone else dies from other causes). So in a linear model 10 REM has roughly a 1% risk, and 1 REM a .1% risk, and so forth on down to zero. But every exposure including background carries SOME risk, so they say “no safe dose” and push the concept of ALARA, keep all doses as low as reasonably attainable.
The model also assumes that, since there is no threshold, it is possible that a tiny dose could start a fatal cancer in a susceptible person, and this includes background radiation.
Some papers suggest a benefit to health from small radiation doses. This is pretty controversial. it’s called Radiation Hormesis. The “official” rad health policies do not recognize that, though.
If you work in the field you have to use LNT.
lol So you get as many aspirin deaths from 1200 people eating one aspirin as you do from one person eating 1200 aspirins, or, you get as many deaths from 100 people jumping off a one foot step as yo do from one person jumping off a 100 foot step. Linear as all get-out.
It does make it easier for administration to administrate, though.
Suppose instead of discussing "official" government regulations and bureaucracy, how about we discuss reality and common sense, considering that they're mutually exclusive most of the time?
A tiny dose stimulates the immune system to repair any damage caused. The idea that it can cause a fatal cancer flies in the face of common sense, and should be discarded as the nonsensical superstition that it is.
Cancer Control Related to Stimulation of Immunity by Low-Dose Radiation
LDR increases cellular antioxidant activity; facilitates DNA damage repair; reduces malignant transformation and mutagenesis, and stimulates immune surveillance.(6–10) All these may contribute to the effect of LDR on the reduction of cancer incidence. There have been experimental studies illustrating: a) the suppressive effect of LDR on tumor growth, metastasis and carcinogenesis, b) the increased anti-cancer immunity, including enhanced NK and CTL activity, and c) the increased IFNγ and IL-2 secretion. All these data point to the significance of enhanced immune responses in cancer control.(11–23)
So what were the levels that said "marine biologist" detected?? This is critical information for any realistic critical thinking about possible effects. Why has not that same "marine biologist" taken a second set of data at this later date??? If he had the tools and samples two years ago, he can surely scrape together the same stuff.
MY guess. He/she HAS taken the measurements and they show no increase over the first set of data. So, just like the non-publication of race of perpetrators in black-on-white violence, the second set of data will disappear, and the first set will continue to be blasted across media of all sorts to scare the ignorant public.
By the way, I didn’t mean to sound snippy or confrontational there.
no problem, FRiend.
I used to be employed as a marine biologist. Therefore, I know that fish are a little hard to sample because they go where they want to seasonally and with circulation patters (e.g., El Nino). I wonder why we would suppose that you could dump pollution into the ocean for the next decades or longer and never experience the ill effects of this policy. There is no stopping the flooding of nuclear waste into the ocean - it will continue unabated.
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