That would definitely be a health hazard...
Posted on 03/12/2011 5:00:54 PM PST by spacejunkie01
There's alot of confusion about taking iodine to ward off radiation poisoning. Dr. Brownstein is an expert in iodine/iodide usage and has written a blog specifically for the radiation.
Inorganic, non radiated iodine does not cause allergies. Most symptoms that people may connect to iodine and assume they are allergic are actually bromine detox symptoms.
Whether we're faced with radiation coming to this country or not, we should all take iodine for health. Deficiency in iodine is known to cause breast cancer, fibroids, thyroid cancer, ovarian and prostate cancer.
(Excerpt) Read more at breastcancerchoices.org ...
Doctor said it was an allergy to iodine. Hives all over and swollen mouth on the inside. I even get the hives in my hair and down in my ears and it itches like crazy!
Oh, you find guys selling all the usual panic gear: Sealed tubs of dehydrated food, sealed O-ringed tubes to hide your guns inside out in the forest, boxes of MREs, water filtration units, bibles with glow-in-the-dark pages, and so on... but not one KI pill to be found anywhere. No mention of them either.
Sort of proves to me that the black helicopter crowd doesn't even believe their own apocalyptic nonsense.
Right now. 8. Sounds very high but I was hypothyroid a very long time. I plan to dose down to 4 which would equal 50mgs in about 6 months.
Wouldn’t adding a little dry seaweed to our diets give us plenty of iodine?
There’s a Korean grocery store chain called H-Mart and they always have cheap seaweed sheets, the stuff people use to wrap sushi.
How much is 750 RADS? One chest x-ray is approximately 3/100 RADS. One CT scan is 1 RAD. >>>>>>>>>>
750 RADS are not heading our way. 750 might be what you get right next to a damaged Japanese nuclear plant. Dr Brownstein is way off on this one
Please, I know this is long, but take a minute to read through it. Hopefully I can explain why this particular 750 Rad thing is bogus, and when you see how off the charts bogus it is, it will help put everything in a more reasonable perspective.
I am not flaming you or anyone else for saying this 750 Rad thing. I am not saying this to belittle you. You just don't understand the mechanics of radiation and what is being thrown out there, and it is getting you and everyone who reads it on edge.
I am on your side, and I am not saying there is nothing to worry about. Anytime you have a bunch of nuclear reactors that have problems of this magnitude, yes, there is a problem and we SHOULD be concerned.
There are a lot of things to be concerned about, but there is no reason to get crazy about this 750 RADS thing you hear. There are people out there throwing these numbers around, moving decimal points three ways to one side or another, not realizing they are doing it, mistaking millicuries for curies, Rads for millirems, sieverts for grays, and so on. Look. Don't get crazed. When someone tells you that 750 Rads are going to contaminate an area, it is nonsensical. The units are wrong. It is like telling someone they need a kilometer of flour to bake a loaf of bread. It is nonsensical and irresponsible, because it is scaring the crap out of people.
Here's the thing. A Rad measures the amount of absorbed radiation on something. Not the amount of radiation, but the amount of energy transferred to something, typically human flesh. (note, you may hear someone refer to rads and rems...for the purposes of human flesh and discussion, they both mean about the same thing...so we will just stick to "rads" because that is what you hear out there a lot) Basically, a Rad measures EXPOSURE to radiation.
If you hear someone mention curies, millicuries or megacuries, that is an amount of decays of an isotope in a given amount of time. When you know what the isotope is, and you know how much energy or what kind of energy is given off when that particular isotope decays, then you have an idea how much radiation there will be.
When you know THAT, then you can figure out how much exposure human flesh will get in a given amount of time when exposed to certain levels of that radiation, and that exposure is measured in Rads.
Now. Here is the thing. EVERYONE gets exposure to radiation, and when your tissue absorbs that radiation, you get exposed to a certain amount of rads of radiation. We ALL get exposed. The average annual exposure to the average person living on this planet is 310 millirem. That is very, very small. That is .31 Rads, spread out over a year. Think of it as eating a cup of salt. Would it be bad for you if you took a cup of salt, mixed it in a glass of water and drank it in one minute? You bet it would be bad. But if you eat that cup of salt over the period of a year, you would probably be fine, but if you eat that much all the time, you will probably have cumulative problems from it, right? Radiation is the same. If you get it spread out over time, it isn't that bad, your body fixes it, but a fair amount over time might have cumulative effects.
I worked in nuclear medicine for 15 years, and I was allowed to have up to 5 rads (that is 5,000 mrad, but we refer to it as mrem or a millirem) a year of exposure to my body. I could have a lot more than that to my hands, which I probably did. But I was allowed to get up to 50 Rads (that's 50,000 mrad!!!!) over the course of a year to my hands because you don't have much in your hands that can be damaged by radiation. I am still here. And I worked with people who handled radiation at much higher levels than I did, and they are in their eighties now, without a problem.
So, back to this 750 Rad thing.
The have a measurement they use called the "LD50/30" dose. It means, the amount of radiation (Rads) that a person can get at one time, all in one shot, that will give you a 50% probability of being dead in 30 days. That amount of radiation is about 600 Rads, more or less. So you can see, if people in California were to get 750 Rads, there would be a huge amount of dead people. That is not, I repeat NOT going to happen. It isn't possible given the amounts of radiation even likely to be released in a worst case scenario.
I can answer questions on this if you want, just post back. There are a lot of people who know a lot more about radiation than I do, and I haven't been working with it for about 15 years now, but I am right as rain on this. If you have questions, I can at least give you a ballpark answer or point you in the right direction if I don't know.
With the terrible, terrible things going on in the world, we have much to be concerned about, but getting a lethal dose of radiation is not one of them. We are more at risk of dying of starvation or freezing to death because our politicians in power are doing their best to destroy our economy and energy industries. Trust me on this.
Good post
Additional reasons why this is not Chernobyl ...
- outstanding construction; reactors built for a high-seismic zone
- withstood 8.9 magnitude quake, which exceeded design criteria
- explosion was most likely a steam explosion (radioactive steam) ... giving good reason to believe the primary containment structure is intact
I would have to say that at this time, I agree the risk is small.
But I DO NOT agree that the risk is non-existent.
One thing that they have seen time and time again when there is a nuclear incident is it’s not at all predictable about what ares get how much. Some areas downwind get by and receive almost no radiation at all.
Other areas get doses that are far, far beyond what the models predict.
And I think it’s a good thing that people can come to the forum and ask questions and discuss things. They openly admit they do not know everything. They are just trying to find out more.
Now there is a certain contingent of knowitalls who come and do nothing constructive, and just heap scorn.
Well I’m not happy that the knowitalls simply didn’t just warn us this was going to happen a week ago.
I guess we should humbly bow to their overpowering flatulence.
;-)
Thanks for the info. There has always been alot of confusion when it comes to rads and rems and LD50 number.
But one thing is sure: less is better than more!
We are in agreement...I don’t believe the risk is non-existent either, unless someone is saying we are going to each get a 750 Rad dose on the west coast.
Then, yes...THAT particular risk is non-existent. But there are a lot of other risks...yes.
Excellent, people need to know the units and what they mean. Fearmongers play to the populace’s ignorance and you are clearing some fog.
That would definitely be a health hazard...
When are we going to find out the truth and how much radiation is in the jet stream?
Please try to find Before It's Too Late: A Scientist's Case FOR Nuclear Energy by Bernard Cohen. You can get a used one from Amazon for a few dollars. This will put the risks of everything into perspective so you won't be tormenting yourself with images that have little basis in fact. You do know, don't you, that a typical coal-fired plant puts out as waste many tons of radioactive materials per year? And that even if one of the Japanese nuclear plants (light water reactors) completely blew up, it would be, compared to Chernobyl (a graphite core that could burn), like a kid taking a leak against the side of the garage of a house by a river compared to a dam breaking upstream, and that Chernobyl (see reference 4), despite the 31 early deaths of people working at the plant over the next four years, didn't result in a huge number or even a moderately large number of deaths in the surrounding countryside and that the major portion of deaths from Chernobyl was caused by moving people away, giving them a stipend, and their dying from alcoholism as a result or by unnecessary abortions?
Did you know that there are places throughout the world where people have lived for thousands of years that have levels of naturally-occurring radiation that are hundreds of times greater than you could ever receive from a popped nuclear electric plant in Japan (much less Chernobyl) without any statistically higher incidence of cancer? (See also CHERNOBYL: THE FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN by Z. Jawoworksi and "Observations on the Chernobyl Disaster and LNT?" Z. Jawoworski, Dose-Response, 2010, and Nuclear Weapons and Radiation: Miscellaneous Facts, John Moore (look for the part titled "Beneficial Radiation and Regulations."
If there was only one thing I learned with 100% certainty in working with radioactive materials, it was that people are often irrationally frightened of them. Even the sight of a radioactive symbol was enough to start a cascade of unforeseen, sometimes even humorous events.
I think it is simply because you cannot see, smell or hear radiation.
I take the same...only it’s called IThroid from RLC labs....
I take the same...only it’s called IThroid from RLC labs....
It says OPSAT. Potassium Iodide Tablets-K1.
Expiration date 8/2007.
To be taken by mouth when instructed by public health officials in the event of radiation exposure.
The note on the top says TMI Pills.
I thought I was OK because I am 10 miles away and they were concerned with those 9 miles away. There must be a barrier between 9 and 10 miles.
Should I throw these things away because of the date?
They look like they are still good.
“Furthermore, I have seen estimates that it is expected that 750 RADS may contaminate these areas.”
Would you please give us your sources of these estimates - is this just blog chatter? Some of us have radiation physics backgrounds - mine is from 30 years ago.
Nope, there are a wagonload of folks that are tired of the fear mongering and BS. We nuked Japan twice. With dirty bombs. In the atmosphere. I don’t remember any radiation related deaths on the west coast.
/johnny
———————But how many developed a cancer 30 years later??????
And even if it had been Chernobyl, Chernobyl was one of the most overhyped disasters until global warming came along.
-—————Tell that to the parents of the children who developed cancer.
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