BTW, should I stop drinking milk?
islamism is still the greatest threat to us all.
Let me put 20 Bq in perspective: You get 15 Bq from eating a banana.
So that’s why those California cows are happy!! They glow in the dark so they can graze all night.
Looks like Wisconsin dairy is still the best. :^)
Let me put 20 Bq in perspective: You get 15 Bq from eating a banana.
Media types love to use “this many times” or “this percent above/below” on pretty much anything because it makes amore compelling headline than the raw numbers. For example (taken from “Bad Science” by Ben Goldacre) if a study showed that eating a certain food or taking a certain medicine increased the number of heart attacks per ten thousand men from 2 to 4, the headlines would scream that said food or medicine doubles your heart attack risk or is a 100% increase. Technically true, but not as dire as it sounds. The bummer is that when they use the same technique ( “Bran reduces your cancer risk by 50%!!!!!!”) it convinces people there’s a bulletproof solution to diseases.
I’ve been looking all over the EPA website trying to find that particular drinking water standard. The closest I can find is a standard for gross beta, at 4 mrem/year.
I’m starting to believe the standard is not an official one, perhaps even made up.
Ban the rain! Ban clouds! Ban rooftops! Ban gutters! Ban everything in sight, San Fransisco!
I think that the fine folks out there in cookie land need to immediately shut down all of the nuclear, coal and gas power plants in Kalifornia to save the Earth from Gorbal Warming. Then they need to close all roads and freeways and ban the use of the internal combustion engine. Once that’s done they need to return all farm land back to natural habitat. Finally, they need to seize all the money from the evil rich and divide it evenly amongst the parasites, sorry, I mean the downtrodden poor people. Only then will their state become the Utopian Nirvana that the libtard fools yearn for.
A radioactive isotope, such as iodine-131, is supposed to have a half-life of eight days. This is inferred to mean that it breaks down quickly, and it quickly dissipates in the environment. However, the 8 day half-life can be a misnomer because radioactive iodine can really persist in the environment for many months and has a 100 day biological half-life once inside the human body.I'm seeing a lot of mixing of apples, oranges, and zebras here.
A radioactive isotope, such as iodine-131, is supposed to have a half-life of eight days.No, this particular isotope has a half-life of eight days. (Actually 8.3, but who's counting?) It's been measured countless times. The burden of proof now lies with whoever wants to argue differently.
This is inferred to mean that it breaks down quickly, and it quickly dissipates in the environment.Breaking down is one thing; dissipating in the environment is another. Iodine-131 breaks down into Xenon-131, which is a stable, nonreactive isotope. This has nothing to do with whether it disperses in the environment or falls to the ground in one concentrated slug.
However, the 8 day half-life can be a misnomer because radioactive iodine can really persist in the environment for many months...OK, now you're shifting goal posts. Some radioactive iodine does persist in the environment for a long time. Iodine-125 has a half-life of 60.2 days; Iodine-129 has a half-life of 17 million years. But you started out talking about Iodine-131, which still has a half-life of 8.3 days.
...and has a 100 day biological half-life once inside the human body.The biological half-life refers to the residence time time in the body of any chemical, regardless of whether it's radioactive or not. Iodine has a biological half-life of 70 days in the thyroid gland, and a couple of weeks in the rest of the body. (Treating the thyroid gland and the rest of the body as separate compartments.) But this applies to all iodine in those compartments. All that addresses is whether iodine is excreted before or after it decays. Other than that, there's nothing wrong with that paragraph.
Poetic justice?
Maybe the California liberals will be genetically altered and turn them into Conservatives. :)
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Are you in the habit of drinking unpurified rainwater straight out of the gutter downspout?
Didn't think so...
Comparing dirty rainwater to a drinking water standard is absurd. It takes (at least) months for rain water to make it to your faucet -- and, by then it has been diluted millions of times by water already here in lakes or aquifers.
Notice that the radioactivity is measured in Becquerels per liter . If you dilute the rainwater by a factor of a million, the radiation is one millionth of its present (constantly declining) level.
Iodine-131 has a half-life of a little over eight (8) days. In a little over a week, that rainwater will be half as radioactive; in 16 days, half of that...ad infinitum... By the time it reaches your faucet, it will have decayed to the point that it is radioactively indistinguishable from the water you drank a month ago -- or yesterday -- or today.
Iodine-131 decays by beta-decay -- it gives off low-energy electrons and positrons. Beta particles are stopped by aluminum foil -- or the roof of your house.
As a teen, I built a cloud chamber to view the tracks of particles released by an alpha/beta particle-emiting radionuclide source. The alpha particles (helium nuclei) traveled only a couple of inches through the air and "died". The few Beta particles that made it to the walls of the chamber were stopped by the glass flask that formed the chamber. The alpha particles could be stopped in less than two inches by a sheet of cigarette paper. I never was able to find aluminum foil thin enough that the beta partcles could penetrate it. At no time, was I able to measure any radiation from the source -- outside the chamber.
Oh -- I'm now 73 -- with no ill effects, three normal kids, eight normal grandkids -- and no sign of cancer.
That rainwater "washed" the I-131 out of the air, and will soak into the soil, which will block the beta radiation, and the I-131 will decay to background levels long before it becomes drinking water -- or milk in your fridge.
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Enjoy your milk -- but not too much -- it's fattening... ;-)
Actually if you buy milk with a far enough date out...you can let it sit for 8 days or more. After 8 days the toxic level has been greatly reduced. The long you can wait the lower it will be.
Funny thing is that SF gets their drinking water from Hetch-Hetchy reservoir near Yosemite - ‘bout the best water on the planet. So, what’s the point of this study?