Showering and drinking the water while Pregnant; and for toddlers
I am not a scientist and I cannot follow this data, as much as I try. Can I get a clear and straight answer from these questions:
(1) I am pregnant in my 23rd week. Should I be taking a showering and drinking water that is filtered? We use New Environs filters for our shower and our tap water.
(2) I have a 2 year old child. Should he be taking a bath, playing outside in the playground that has been rained on, and drinking tap water?
(3) Should we be outside when it rains, walking around?
Thanks
ABH
lower risk as much as possible
Hello ABH,
I am not affiliated with UC Berkeley, but personally I like to reduce this type of risk as much as possible. For my family and friends here in California and in Japan, I have been suggesting air and water filtration based on this advisory:
http://idealist.ws/index.php#MORE
1) Filter all your drinking water with a reverse osmosis filter or distiller. Active carbon water filtering alone is not enough.
2)Get a HEPA filer and put it in your bedroom and your son's bedroom. Get the filter with the highest "Merv" value you can afford. Run it all night when you sleep.
3)Do not buy goat milk or dairy products made with it. Goats bio-accumulate iodine-131 in milk at levels ten thousand times that found in air
4)Buy soy milk instead of cow milk for the next 2 months
By the time your baby is born in June or July, all the Iodine-131 from Japan will likely be gone. Many people will tell you these steps are not necessary, but there is a standard called "As Low as Reasonably Practicable Risk" that this advise conforms to:
http://www.stb07.com/technical-safety/alarp.html
oh yeah, I almost forgot. Buy a non-slip mat for your tub and make sure a grab bar is installed by your toilet, tub and shower ;)
--
Anonymous
ORGANIC soy milk only!
Switching to soy milk may be an okay approach for avoiding dairy, but make sure it's organic. All other soy is genetically modified, and causes a whole bunch of other health problems, especially for small children.
Consider coconut milk.
Hi ABH, 1) At this time the
Hi ABH,
1) At this time the health risk is very low and if you have activated charcoal filters, even lower. In fact, you probably have more health risk from slipping in the shower.
2) Playing outside should be fine. I would not recommend drinking a ton of rain water, but this is a general rule not because of the Japan issue. Millions of cars and trucks in the Bay Area exhaust particles into the air, some of which are carcinogenic, and rain scrubs the air and concentrates these in the rain water. This is among other industrial effluents which make it to the rain water. Tap water has been treated to some extent and should pose no risk.
Smog Particulates
Chrome-6 Pollution
3) Playing in the rain is not the issue with the type of trace elements we are seeing. The risk would be if you ingested the iodine in which some of that would go to the thyroid. In the trace amounts we are seeing, the dose is so low, even if you drank a ton of the rain water, that a few days in the mountains would be about the same radiation risk. For children, the risk is a bit higher, so multiply that by 10, so make that 20-30 days in the mountains.
I think you wanted to divide
I think you wanted to divide by 10 for children, not multiple. Anyway, I get the gist of what you're saying :-) Thanks for taking the time to comment in these threads!
Yeah, that was kind of
Yeah, that was kind of confusing. Let me be more clear: The dose conversion factor for children is 10 times higher than adults so the effective dose to children is closer to 8 mrem, the time in the mountains (say Colorado) is 44 mrem per year higher than at sea level. So, one would have to spend 6 days in the mountains to equal the same dose increase.
From ABH
This is ABH who just posted this question for the forum. I live in Berkeley, CA up near Tilden Park in case you need to know my exact location.