Is any sort of radiation exposure cumulative?
Is the absorption/damage from radiation from both internal and external sources to the body the reason why X-rays are compared to ingesting radioactive Iodine?
Also, in addition to X-rays, some medical procedures require the patient to consume, sometimes even large amounts of a fluid containing radioactive isotopes.
yes
yes it is
Joseph, Could you put the
Joseph,
Could you put the normal background radiation in terms from you Earth:Bacteria analogy?
I think that would show a lot of people what the scale of this threat looks like.
Thanks.
When I was about 10 or 11ish
When I was about 10 or 11ish I did get a chest X-ray that required that I drink something with those isotopes and wound up drinking a lot of it.
What doses are often taken in those procedures? And the half-lives and biological half-lives?
But as medical science advances ...
As medical science advances we have more and more findings that both the toxic (e.g. heavy metals) and radioactive imaging doses are not "safe" enough by reasonable standards.
Clearly given a medical condition there is a trade-off involved depending upon the possible condition, with the upside of diagnosis resulting in life saving treatment. But that is not the case with radiation added to the environment.
Furthermore, there are respected newer findings from as recently as in the last year showing that due to methodology some cancer rate measures are confounded by CAT scan radiation caused cancers.
There are lawsuits over several varieties of what the consumer is told are "contrast" for cat scan and MRI imaging because their method of making the toxic heavy metals "safe", (binding ions) has been found to be unreliable.
Even over the counter common medications such as Ibuprofen and Acetaminophen have now recently been found to be unsafe (by comparatively conservative groups).
I.e., it is helpful to have a comparison to a known such as medical doses, but we have to keep in mind that actually does not speak to safety at all.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/0
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/health/01radiation.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121436092
This is a quote from the second link
"A new study from the National Cancer Institute projects 29,000 excess cancers from the 72 million CT scans that Americans got in 2007 alone. Nearly 15,000 of those cancers could be fatal."
"She adds that a single CT scan can deliver about the same radiation dose that survivors of the atomic blasts at Nagasaki and Hiroshima endured."
Somehow I am not comforted by the comparisons to these medical procedures.
really silly to say risk/benefit
travelling from new york to california at least gives you some benefit
and people take the risk for that benefit. But there is no benefit
to being exposed to radiation for nothing like what is in our
drinking water and milk. So please dont say "risk/benefit" since
there isnt any extra benefit to having all this extra though
tiny radiation around us and in our food supply.
basically you mean to say
there is a small increase in risk for the SAME amount of benefit for doing everyday normal life things such as eating and drinking and going outdoors
that one would have normally done.
eat a banana, go to jail
yes.
the bananas and airplane thingie causes me to wonder. that's a pretty unscientific shifty baseline. sure we can't escape from toxic poisons and radioactive substances in our environment, along with other forms of manmade pollution, but that doesn't make it arbitrarily safe.
Dear Mr. Miller
I think one very valid critique of this project with respect to expressions of "reassurance" is that there is a generally accepted scientific consensus that NO dose is safe and that each individual dose and individual involved is at SOME risk when exposed to radio-iodine and radiocesium (not to menhtion strontium which I suspect is out here in the Japan plume too).
Infants in utero, pregnant and lactating women, children, infants, persons with already compromised immune systems all are at greater risk of harm than healthy adults.
VERY minute exposures IF bioaccumulated in the thyroid or other organs and bones, blood and teeth (of developing fetuses and children) MAY result in hypothyroid and metabolic disorders, cancer, leukemia and even death BECAUSE an absorbed dose inside the body causes much more serious harm.
The risk models that you use are challenged by many qualified scientists as assessing the harm as being way too low and a study by the European Committee on Radiation Risk has done numerous studies and analyses which STRONGLY refute the risk models that you are relying on.
A simple comparison of the dispute over Chernobyl consequences between the most recent UN study on Chernobyl consequences vs the NY Academy of Sciences study on Chernobyl demonstrates that in academic and scientific circles there is a VERY wide spectrum of expert opinion on possible risks from very low doses.
i do realize that you are using the prevailing risk standard when you provide these reassurances to the public HOWEVER suppose these risk models you rely on are wrong and those proposing MUCH more stringent standards to protect the public are correct.
Isn't it more prudent and reassuring to err on the side of caution and do what, for example, the Korean educational authorites did: i.e. advise people NOT to get soaked with rain, not to drink rainwater, use an umbrella, and wash after being exposed to even these minute levels (the Koreans even closed more than a hundred schools and kept children indoors when the radioactive plume was coming down in the rain)?
MAYBE the risk is small as you say and MAYBE it is not. But IF the risk MAY be higher than your risk model and advisors are telling you, wouldn't the prudent thing to advise would be to err on the side of caution. Don't drink the milk with I-131 and radiocesium. Don't play in radioactive rain (and if you get wet shower as the tap water is much more diluted and the stuff WILL get absorbed if left on but will wash off in the shower), USE an umbrella, DON'T eat the spinach and mushrooms etc if the radioiodine, etc rained down on them.
My critique is that as with ANY scientific endeavor YOU folks MAY be wrong or proven wrong once the epidemiolofgical studies begin to emerge (how many miscarriages, spontaeous abortions, birth defects, etc in 6-9 months from now and beyond)...
Because you folks say you REALLY do not know for sure and are RELYING on a model that MANY of us do not trust and which MANY scientists and MDs disagree with (again see the 2003 European Committee on Radiation Risk analyses on why the risk model regarding low level exposures to ionizing radiation you are using is dangerously flawed) it would be MUCH more reassuring IF you simply refrained from telling us there is nothing to worry about if we drink milk and eat veggies that have bioaccumulative radioisotopes in them which SOME scientists say MIGHT damage us (especially fetuses and infants) severely.
Otherwise you are doing a GREAT job (I mean it) in providing data.
I have worked with the folks (MDs, epidemiologists, Health Physicists, nuclear scientists, MDs, etc) at the Radiation and Public Health project and I am very familiar with the arguments on both sides.
( see www.radiation.org for many studies and reports including peer reviewed articles on precisely these points)
Your data is invaluable. But if even ONE child gets a deadly leukemia or cancer or one fetus gets a birth defect or is spontaneously aborted or stillborn because his mom ate spinach or drank tainted milk with what we are told are minute doses based an assurances that we are all safe and the risks are "minimal" ISN'T THAT TOO MANY?
This is my only issue really right now with your reassurances. I wish you wouldn't. You MIGHT be dead wrong on the risks.
thank you Bill for your concise commentary
thank you Bill. this seems probable at best as a case of shifting goalposts to me. yes the BRAWM team is providing valuable data. yes the public needs access to this data and relevant interpretations and realistic guidelines. but i also feel they should error on the side of caution. eg., the body emits natural radiation BFD. synthetic, highly toxic and radioactive radionuclides should be considered to be highly dangerous to human health.
I've read alot of posts from
I've read alot of posts from you kazoo and give noticed you've taken it upon yourself to start fielding comments directed to the team. not only are you arrogant you assume we care to hear your two cents. Are you affiliated with the team? Are you a forum mod? I have a feeling neither...take your self satisfied smug bs and stick it up your kazoo.
With all due respect, I
With all due respect, I think you did have reason to assume you should change your lifestyle. You knew that new/additional substances which do harm to the human body would be arriving in the US. You knew something about these substances, for example that some of them decay fairly quickly and thus their threat is of a short term nature. You knew that relatively easy and inexpensive steps could be taken to reduce if not eliminate one's exposure to the short term threats. Just a few examples:
- Switch away from drinking rain water if one does that (some actually do)
- Stock up on food and fluids and rotate your supply so that you are consuming from clean supplies or at least consuming from supplies which have reduced levels of the short lived radionuclides
- Be more thoughtful about food purchases, pay attention to where things were produced and when and how, make substitutions where alternatives offer an advantage
- Be cognizant that unusually high contamination is in the air, in the rain, depositing on the soil. The kids want to go outside and play in rain and puddles... tell them to play inside today. You have some outdoor landscaping work you want to do... put it off for awhile or at least wear a mask.
I think far too many people make the "all or nothing" mistake. They rationalize doing nothing on the basis that it is impossible to eliminate all risks. Instead of rationalizing doing something on the basis that it it is prudent and can incrementally reduce their risk.
Thanks and a little background
I worked in the nuclear industry with the environmental medicine analystst (MDs). I also have a doctorate (not in physics or medicine, but a doctorate which qualified me to work in that position which I left in less than a year due to my concerns and my conscience about industry practices and safety issues).
I am primarily concerned NOT with going in the rain (although I avoid it and urge my kids to use an umbrella).
I am concerned with the possible serious risk to infants in utero.
My concern is not for me. i cannot get pregnant and have no plans to get anyone else pregnant, but many who are on this forum are.
The reassurances are, in my opinion, unjustified.
I do appreciate your candor and your wilingness to engage. That in and of itself is HUGELY reassuring that you believe what you say and that you are honest in what you are giving us.
Frankly I was hoping that I might get someone on the BRAWN team to consider the ECRR risk model and MAYBE back off the assurances that we are all safe and sound (because I am convincd by scientific data that infants and fetuses are potentially at serious risk of harm from even tiny internal exposures).
You may disagree with the ECRR risk model but IF they are correct that the model you are using is off by factors between 100 and 1000 (and the risks would be even higher than those factors for infants and fetuses) then PREGNANY women and parents of children need to be aware that precautions are in order. Try to avoid ingesting milk, produce, water, etc that has radioiodine and radiocesium. I am not talking uv rays or naturally occurring radiation, I am talking products of the nuclear fuel cycle which do NOT appear in nature without man's intervention. These radionuclids are bioaccumulative and if they accumulate in a fetus it MIGHT mean mutation or miscarriage. The risk may be tiny. But the harm is absolute if it happens.
I just wish you guys would err on the side of "we do not know if it is safe" or "Better safe than sorry"
Thank you for the conscientious responses. I won't push it but DO hope your team studies the results of the NY Aacademy of sciences study and the ECRR studies despite the industries endless attempts to denigrate the research. I also recommend "Nuclear Witness" and the chapters on Ernest Sternglass and John Gofman who quit the industry and became whistleblowers. Both were TOP nuclear scientists who found out too late that the industry was lying about the risks, especially to fetuses and infants.
Bill, I think you are
Bill, I think you are correct. The staff and students of Berkeley are hard-working and have good intentions, but don't forget that all official science works on consensus and not on truth per-say. You won't win this battle here--and as I'm sure you are doing, you are also getting information from other sites. Good luck.
How can we avoid ingesting
How can we avoid ingesting food with radionuclides now that the radiation has spread all over the Northern Hemisphere? Well other than only buy food from the Southern Hemisphere but still how about all those ingredients in a packaged product?
eat bananas, chocolate, coconuts and get beef from argentina
and no milk for three months or so ater the plumes stop arrtiving.
southern hemisphere food. yup.yum.
How about strawberries?
How about strawberries?