Milk update (6/30)
6/30 (6:32pm): A milk sample with a Best By date of 7/7 was added to our Milk results. Cesium-134 and Cs-137 continue to be detected. We will continue testing milk until levels are consistently below our MDA.
Mark [BRAWM Team Member]
Mark, how much cesium does
Mark, how much cesium does it take to affect a fetus?
Can anyone help me with
Can anyone help me with this? Maybe I need to rephrase this...or maybe I'm asking the question on the wrong forum. Can anyone field this?
Dose equivalence
Apologies, I missed this earlier. We calculate the dose from drinking the milk and present a number in parentheses in the table of data. For the latest sample, we have calculated that it would take drinking 23,000 liters of milk for the dose from Cesium-134 to equal that of a cross-country plane flight, and 22,000 liters of milk for the same dose from Cesium-137. Combining the two isotopes, it would take drinking 11,000 liters of milk to get the same dose as a cross-country plane trip.
Does this answer your question, or at least give you a sense of the scale of the risk? Please let me know.
Mark [BRAWM Team Member]
It does give us a sense of
It does give us a sense of the scale. I guess i'm getting hung up on the fact that cesium is deposited into the bones...so does the dose equivalent still apply? Does it take twenty two thousand liters of milk before the cesium in the baby's bones becomes a problem or the iodine begins to affect the thyroid? I'm really hung up on the thought that there are radioactive elements being deposited into our baby. Also, at what level of exposure do genetic mutations start to occur? Twenty two thousand liters?
The natural amount of
The natural amount of radioactive elements from natural thorium, uranium, and potassium in our environment are also incorporated into our bodies. The relative amounts we are seeing from cesium are many factors of 10 (i.e. thousands) less than these. Genetic mutations occur every day naturally and our body has developed defense mechanisms to fix these mutations or kill the offending cell. Cancer is caused naturally through these processes and one must ask how these additional materials effect the probability of one of these mutations turn into cancer. Although the specific organ effected by certain radionuclides may be different, the fact is that these concentrations insignificantly effect the overall probability of getting cancer relative to the natural rate. To give you some numbers, the natural rate of cancer in the US is something like 1 in 360 per year, so you have a 0.3% chance every year. If you don't smoke your chance is reduced to 1 in 515 per year (0.19%). At the concentrations we are seeing from Fukushima and using the linear extrapolation models for health effects from internal exposure, the probability of a cancerous mutation from these additional nuclides is estimated to be 1 in >1 million. We don't know the actual number because these models are very uncertain at these low levels of exposure and there are scientific debates on how accurate the linear model is. But, it is clear that the comparative risk relative to natural sources is very, very small and one should be informed but not overly worried.
I hope this puts your mind at ease.
Thank you Dchivers. I can
Thank you Dchivers. I can see how these are almost negligible compared to what we are exposed to every day. I appreciate your response. I'm still having a heck of a time getting over the idea that these elements with half lives of DECADES are being deposited into the baby's bone structure. Do the one in one million odds take this duration into account? Does the baby eventually "flush" the cesium and strontium etc out? I'm sorry for sounding like a broken record here.
This is something that
This is something that concerns me as well. Since baby cell are mutating 10 times faster than adults any damage done now will be significant. Does the radiation eventually overwhelm the bodies natural defended? Autochecker. Dr apsley posed that question. Check his site out maybe u can find some info there. Glta
The odds do take into effect
The odds do take into effect the biological half-life of the element. Just like normal atoms in our body, they are replaced by new ones on a continual basis. If the radioactive atom does not have a chemical "place" in your body it will be flushed out quite quickly. However, if the atom is similar to another atom that performs a chemical function, it may stick around longer. For instance, cesium is similar to potassium which has many uses in the body to include regulation of cellular osmosis and neuron (nerve cell) communication. The cesium is not static in the body as new potassium (and sodium) enters from food sources and replaces old atoms. The kidneys regulate the concentration and so eventually these atoms flush into the urine waste stream. All of our calculations for health effects have been based on the Total Effective Dose Equivalent (TEDE) which uses the biological half-life within the Committed Effective Dose Equivalent (CEDE). The biological half-life of cesium is around 70 days so any Cs137 or Cs134 atom has approximately a 0.4% chance of decaying while in the body.
Context by the numbers:
So, our highest measurement in milk for cesium (both 134 and 137) is ~1 Bq per liter. A Becquerel is a decay per second. So, if you drank a liter of milk from that sample you would incur approximately 8.7 million decays from the cesium. That seems like a lot, but in the same amount of time, you incur 111 billion decays from naturally occurring radioactive potassium-40 (0.1 uCi at 370 days). This is a viable comparison since potassium and cesium act the same in the body and the effect of each decay is similar: 0.5 MeV beta for Cs137 , 1.3 MeV beta for K40. So, that liter of milk increased the number of decays by 1 part in 12,861. This increase is not perceivable with respect to natural variations that effect health.
Dchivers- Nice post, thanks,
Dchivers-
Nice post, thanks, and I also appreciate your info on my thread about D-I-Y testing yesteday.
If I can raise my hand and ask another question - at what level of intake is there a marked increase of risk? . Obviously, if we were to look at an average level of say 100 bq/kg of food for an extended period, the results would be quite different - just to use your simple example, each kg of food at that level would raise the amount of decays by one in 128. It seems that eating food at that level for an extended time period could get close to doubling the internal radiation count. Can you comment on this and the 70 day biological life of cesium? If a person is taking in say 10 bq worth of cesium a day for a year, does the level reach a plateau and then stay there as intake and elimination reach an equilibrium?
I have seen some ridiculously high levels of food that people eat - here is a an article about wild boar in Germany, where the go/no-go for cesium in meat is 600 bq/kg. Looking at the 1 in 12,861 figure, and dividing it by 600, it would increase the decays experienced by 1 in 21. Eat 21 kilos of that tasty boar meat and a fella would be at 1 in 1, which is to say that the cesium would contribute as many decays as the K-40, effectivly doubling the internal radiation dose (if we just consider K-40 and the cesium isotopes).
I hunt, and believe me, if I was lucky enough to get a boar, I would eat every bit of 21 kilos in a very short time! Now, I do realize that 600 bq/kg is on the extreme end of this thing.
Is there a saturation level beyond which the body no longer absorbs cesium?
Blurb on radiaoctive hogs. Would make a good movie, no?
"Thousands of wild boars killed in southern Germany every year register unacceptable levels of radiation. It's calculated in becquerels, a measurement of radiation given off. Anything beyond 600 becquerels per kilogram isn't recommended, according to Germany's Federal Office for Radiation Protection.
Normal meat has an average contamination of 0.5 becquerel per kilogram, and a German would normally consume about 100 becquerels per year from plants and dairy products, the agency said.
About 2 percent of the 50,000 boars hunted are above the legal radioactivity limit, Reddemann said. And the government's radiation protection office says some mushrooms have registered up to 20 times the legal cesium limit."
A couple of things to keep
A couple of things to keep in mind:
1) Currently, science has not proven nor disproven a "threshold" effect where an increase in exposure creates a marked increase in health risk. There is debate on this, but the current accepted theory is that risk increases linearly with exposure. This means that if you double your exposure, you will double your risk of health effects. This is all statistical stuff here. It is like rolling a trillion-sided dice where one side is the "bad" side. Every decay rolls the dice, natural or otherwise. What is the number of sides of this dice? :
1 Sievert = 1 in 20 chance of cancer
109.5 billion decays internally per year of K40
Estimated dose from K40 annually: 136 uSv <- that is microSieverts or a millionth of a Sievert
=> Each decay, on average, is 1.24E-15 Sieverts
OR, 1.24E-15 / 20 = a 1 in 1.61E16 chance. So the number of sides is ~ 10 million billion.
K40 rolls this dice around 110 billion times per year, this means a 1 in 146,389 chance every year.
Adding the 8.7 millions rolls from the Cs137 this is 1 in 146,378 for the year or so you received the exposure.
If you double this exposure to 17.4 million rolls, this results in 1 in 146,367.
Ok, let's go crazy: 10 times the exposure to 87 million rolls: that is 1 in 146,275
So, these changes are quite minuscule relative to the normal exposure risk probabilities (sides of the dice).
Which brings me to my second point:
2) Our exposure to natural radioactivity depends on where we live. We can vary from year to year by as much as 100% by just the air we are breathing and the region of the the foods we eat. Different areas on the Earth have varying degrees of K40, U238, and Th232 concentrations in the soil and therefore these concentrations are reflected in the air and the food. By far, the most exposure we receive naturally is from radon gas which is a decay product of both U238 and Th232 and leaches out of the soil, decays into other atoms such as polonium, bismuth, and lead (all radioactive), and these attach to dust particles which we inhale regularly.
So, big picture: We live, and have lived for millions of years, with natural radioactivity both externally and internally. The radioactivity from potassium, thorium, and uranium produce a risk of health effects by cell mutation. This risk has been mitigated (mitigation reduces probability) by the body by evolutionary changes throughout time that act to repair cell damage from radiation.
Here is the kicker: No scientist has ever proven that these differences in radiation exposure over the many regions of the Earth, has an observable effect in the cancer rate. This does not mean that differences do not exist, only that the differences, if they do exist, are so small as to not be detectable.
The very small difference in the probabilities I show above are dwarfed by the natural variability we experience every year by traveling more or less, eating from different regions, etc., etc..
Does this mean that this extra exposure is good for you? No. But we all have to maintain a sense of perspective.
As far as the boar meat, I would also compare that to the amount of natural radioactivity in each kg of the boar as well. My feeling is that even if you double your natural exposure, this should not be an issue because we see these types of exposure variances from year to year anyway. The average US dose rate from natural sources is 3mSv but we see regional differences from 0.5 to 6 mSv per year. Once your exposure gets out of this normal range (say > 10 mSv per year), it would be prudent for one to reduce their exposure.
I don't think Cesium is a
I don't think Cesium is a bone seeker like Strontium, though I have seen some newspaper articles mentioning that. Maybe they got strontium confused with Cesium?
Also...I should rephrase one
Also...I should rephrase one of my earlier questions. At what levels of exposure do birth defects occur? The doctor has observed that the baby seems slightly underweight and my fiance is becoming extremely worried about how little movement she is feeling in the sixth month (little to none). We have been extremely conscious of our diet...I quit smoking as soon as we found out she was pregnant...eat natural and organic foods.
i've also been quite
i've also been quite concerned about all of this; i'm in seattle and have a 4-year-old and am 7 months pregnant. my son just started preschool, and the lack of control i have over what he's eating and how much dusty dirt he's playing in is driving me a little crazy.
hopefully to set your mind at ease, though: in both of my pregnancies, i ended up in OB ER due to lack of fetal movement, right at 6 months. both times. both times, everything is/was fine.
this is not to say that i don't have recurring dreams about chernobyl-style birth defects at delivery...but my OB can feel the baby and says she doesn't feel any masses... :(
best of luck to you guys!
Thank you for your kind
Thank you for your kind words. We are just outside Seattle. This is a nightmare. We have an appointment in a week...I'm not sure if they will be able to feel for masses. The doctor has rolled her eyes at us when we've brought up these concerns so I'm afraid to even mention it. But the lack of movement is very worrying. I've had nightmares every other night about what could go wrong and possible health effects like leukemia or thyroid cancer. It sucks. Not being able to just sit back and enjoy the experience. I feel terrible for my girlfriend and worry about the stress that all of this has on her so I try not to relate too much of the scary stuff that I've read...but it's hard to ignore her daily worrying about lack of movement. Good luck to you as well!
would your insurance allow
would your insurance allow you a walk-in visit? if this has been going on for several days, i'd probably want to get it checked out, just to be safe.
i completely agree about the nightmare status of all of this...with fukushima, nebraska, los alamos, and who knows what else. i really appreciate the level-headed replies that the BRAWM team generates, but like you, this nags me. everyone thinks i'm nuts as well :) i opted for a vegetarian, dairy-free lunch for my son at preschool, but who knows if it's being enforced?
and speaking of diet, personally i'm also opting for dairy-free and mostly vegetarian. i slip a few eggs and pizzas in here and there...but i've read in another post that cesium uptake by animals, from greatest to least, is chicken>beef>lamb>pork (based on chernobyl reports). so i'd avoid chicken and beef, at the very least, during the pregnancy. i'm also trying to buy all my berries and veg frozen (grown in chile and mexico), and picking apples and pears from argentina, which is pretty drab menu-wise but a necessary precaution, as i see it.
i just wish they'd stop opening the doors over there :) one minute the rain is clean, then next it's not...ugh. nightmare for sure.
I have an eight month old
I have an eight month old and a 4 year old. If you are worried and your doctor is rolling your eyes, make an appointment with a licensed midwife or naturopathic doctor and they will take you more seriously!
Midwife appointment is next
Midwife appointment is next week. Our doctors response to the fact that there was little movement was "It's normal for some parents". Regarding the size, I misunderstood. My GF's weight gain is under the normal increase so far, not the baby's. Thanks for your blind assessment of my manliness and hormonal levels anon. You don't know me. Screw you pal.
AMEN my friend! Buddy, if
AMEN my friend!
Buddy, if your gf's MD is rolling her eyes about these concerns, fire her a$$. Your gf won't want to rock the boat, but you should take control and tell her that she and your baby need a real MD who takes this sh@t seriously and will counsel her properly and will partner with her like an adult, not a child who is "overreacting". Find another doctor today!
Ugh. We're all so polite about this, aren't we? To the point of our own destruction.
No offense, dude, but I call it wimpy. Man up and help your family.
I don't know if these
I don't know if these comments came from the same poster or two...I don't know where you get off man. I don't know enough about this to argue with a freaking doctor! Would you care to elaborate on how you've surmised that I'm being a wimp?
"The doctor has rolled her
"The doctor has rolled her eyes at us when we've brought up these concerns so I'm afraid to even mention it. But the lack of movement is very worrying."
I realize you are under a lot of stress and I don't mean to sound like a jerk, but do you have any testosterone? I'm sorry to hurt your feelings, but really...
Whoa. That's taking it a
Whoa. That's taking it a little far isn't it? Wimpy? Testosterone? Thanks for your observation. It's easier said than done going up against a medical professional over something like this.
From my experience,
I would leave the office of a doctor who rolled their eyes in this situation. When I didn't, and was an obedient patient, it did not end well. Maybe stop drinking milk, in addition, to quitting smoking. I hope that you can find a more informed doctor, and I hope that everything goes smoothly. The lack of perceptible movement at 6 months is very common. Please keep us posted!
Perhaps my faith in medicine
Perhaps my faith in medicine has been naive. According to a co-worker our "Grouphealth" plan is lovingly called "GroupDeath" around here.