Instantaneous vs. Long Term Reporting Anaologies
Using an anology to report radiolytic toxicity can be misleading. Comparing a discreet amount of a radioactive consumable substance (like Strawberries, for example) to radiolytic exposure from a cross-country flight seems uninformative within the context of the Fukushima problem. It seems to me the more useful method to express a user-friendly understanding of dosage effects would be to say for how long one would have to consume the item in question before accumluated radiolytic toxicity is an actual health problem. Better still, how long would one have to consume all existing impacted consumables (water, air, strawberries, milk, meat, etc.) before actual health impacts were experienced? That is a far more useful measure because you can't eat tons of strawberries ever, and we are going to be exposed to the radioactive isotopes from Japan for many, many years in a ubiquitous manner. We should be talking about long-term actual effects and not using analogies that no one can relate to.
It's not that cut and dry
Being able to state "how long one would have to consume the item in
question before accumluated radiolytic toxicity is an actual health
problem" isn't that simple. That's why you see the BRAWM team and
various agencies give examples like xrays, air travel, etc. It's
really just to show how small the exposure is. Not contrast it with
the level that would make you ill. The same thing can be said about
cigarette smoking. Just one cigarette could give you lung cancer.
And a % risk could be assigned to that one cigarette. Which would
be very low. But, not zero.
It's not like being able to say how many gallons it would take to fill
a bucket before it spills over. About the only thing that can be done
is to estimate how much a person would have to consume before [acute]
health problmes occur. I believe there is research that can show that.
Short of that, all that can be stated are guesses at % risk. For example,
I heard it reported on the news that the 3 workers that stepped into
radioactive water in the plant "had a 30% increased risk of getting
cancer". That sounded low to me. And I have no idea how accurate that
% is. If the water was so highly radioactive, I thought it would be a
100% chance. But, again, that just shows that it's not a specific number.
You can have 10 people exposed to the same dose and not all will develope
the same health issues, if any.
As far as combined and accumulative intake across all the foods, that will
be problamatic at best. About all that could be stated is if you had a
diet of all or a subset of only the foods that have been analyzed. The %
of each consumed in the diet would have to be known (or guessed at) was
would the physical make up of the individual consuming the food. And then
it still would be a % risk estimate.
I'm ok with the comparisons with xrays and air travel. It tells me how
extremely low the doses are. Is there a risk? Yes. But, putting it in
perspective, I'm not going to worry about it. And I'll wait for the
thousands of other things I've gotten into my body (past nuke fallout,
chemical exposure, smog, etc) to give me cancer. The isotopes from
Fukushima will have to stand in line with the rest. We've all got a 40%
chance even with this disaster.