Taking KCl (salt substitute) for protection from Cs
Posted by BC 7/4/11
I thought about it. Turns out, it is a BAD IDEA.
Mark from BRAWM has made some very good points about K40 and how much internal radiation we experience from it. One thing that stuck in my mind - Milk has something like 50bq/l from K40.
Well check it out. If you look at recommended daily intake for potassium it's around 3.5 grams/day. Each gram of naturally occurring potassium has about 31 bq/PER GRAM of activity. So if one takes in 3.5 grams of K per day, and it's activity is 31 bq/g, then we intake about 109 bq/day from naturally occurring K-40.
I had thought to myself, well maybe I will take some KCl to block cesium activity. And that could make sense at a high level of exposure, and I may have my K level checked, and if it is low I will bulk it up for general health. But let me make it clear - I swallowed ~ 1 gram (which is .527 grams of potassium, and the rest is chlorine) of KCl salt substitute yesterday. If you use the latest UCBNE milk sample, the cesium activity was .24 bg/l, and figure that .527 grams of K (.527G X 31 bq/g) has 16 bq of activity, you can also see that in order to ingest as much "activity" as that gram of KCl I ingested (1 gr KCl@ 16 bq divided by .24/bq/l in milk (that's Cs only, not K), that one would need to drink 66 liters of milks to get the same amount of "cesium sourced radiation" as I got from the "potassium sourced" radiation in one gram of salt substitute. FWIW, K40 and Cs-134/137 have similar types of radioactive decay.
At current levels, you would need to drink 66 liters of milk to get the same amount of radiation from added cesium as you would get from 1 gram of KCl "salt substitute".
Also, bear in mind that an average liter of milk has 49 bq of activity from potassium. Divide that number (49bq/l) by the amount of cesium activity in the latest homogenized sample (.24bq/l) and you can see that there are 204 bq of activity from K40 for every bq of Cs 134/137 (combined).
The take away is that the levels of radiation from cesium in milk the USA, as being measured my UCBNE, are quite low. If you are trying to get a feel, buy some potassium chloride and take a gram. 16 BECQUERELS!!! The same as 16+ gallons of milk.
Disclaimer - Japan is likely super hosed. And the hot particles issue is not resolved to my satisfaction. Also, I know little about cesium's chemical toxicity, which is a whole different thing. It decays into barium, which is pretty crappy. You wouldn't want to have much barium in your cheerios. Also, it would be very good to know more about the physical properties of the cesium fallout - what is their size? If they are molecular or near so, great. Big chunks? Different story for inhalation, probably "OK" for ingestion. To bring another unknown in, potassium levels, and their ratios to sodium, and a bunch of other things, influence blood pressure and goodgodamighty knows what else. Cesium in biologically significant quantities may enter this equation, in a chemical way.
But it looks like "the radiation" a glass of milk is pretty low level :). Just stay away from wild boar until we get that tested.
Remove the K-40 from KI
This would be a better idea if the potassium K, in the KI were K-39, rather than the naturally occurring mixture of K-39 + K-40 + K-41.
Relatively simple and inexpensive industrial separation techniques could markedly reduce the presence of the radioactive isotope K=40 in humans and in the food chain.
By this mechanism, we can perhaps reduce the impending cancer epidemic in the entire northern hemisphere.
Please read response here
Please read response here
Actually, the point I was
Actually, the point I was making is that the additonal radiation we are experiencing from cesium is small change compared to the natural K-40, and that a person with a higher natural potassium level probably experiences a higher "additional" level of exposure than any of us likely will from the cesium (here in the US as things currently are). BTW, this thought has been posited on the forum previously by the team and others. As for low potassium, that's a great way to die from blood pressure problems and other maladies.
Very little of the K in the human diet is from anyting that we could remove the K-40 from. It's not like we can smash up a banana, pull out the K-40, put it back in the peel and put in in a lunch sack. It's in our diet and always has been, and always will be, and the risk is part of the deal.
I am not trying to minimize the risk of our exposure to any of this stuff, man-made or not, just trying to put some perspective into it.
There is a large psychological component to all of this.
BC
K40
Yes. K40 is a common argument for the radiation exposure by natural sources. Very convenient for the nuclear industry is the high beta energy of the ubiquitary K40 - about 2MeV, which translates in relevant ionization doses (gray) and radiation impact (sievert). Very convenient as well for this industry is the low beta energy of Tritium (ca. 50keV), thus this substantial emission from every nuclear power plant can be displayed as being negligible. Since this emission cannot be avoided by reasonable measures, this comparison has been one of the centerpieces of the "peaceful atom" campaigns.
However, K40 is distributed equally in the body water and the high beta energy means that the ionizations from its radiation are absolutely randomly distributed (several inches reach in body tissue). Ionizations from beta particles are very few during the high energy phase and raise sharply when after slowing down at the end of the reach levels of 100-20KeV are present - in this final phase all remaining energy is translated into ionization in a very small area.
Tritium beta particles start with such low energy, thus delivering their damaging effects within a very short distance from the incorporation, in this regard being similar to alpha particles. If the Tritium is bound to a hydrocarbon by biological processes, the location of these damaging effects will be likely in those body areas which are biologically most active.
So I am not afraid about the K40 exposure, but I am really worrying about the Tritium emissions of nuclear installations. Look for leucemia incidence, in particular with children, in these areas.
The anonymous post right
The anonymous post right below this brings up a good point. Although your comparison is correct in that a gram of KCl is definitely much more radioactive, potassium is already in your body, which means that K-40 is already in you and in equilibrium. Eating more K-40 doesn't load you up with extra exposure for very long.
This goes back to the difference in biological half-life: Because you're constantly ingesting and removing K-40, the additional K-40 from the salt substitute wouldn't stick around very long (basically until the next time you urinated), whereas the Cs-137 is a new introduction to your body with a biological half-life of 70 days.
Tim [BRAWM Team Member]
Tim - Interesting. I had
Tim -
Interesting. I had picked up on the 70 day biological half-life of Cs and figured that since it is treated the same as K by the body that they would have similar biological half lives.
Thanks for the insight.
It's a subtle difference:
It's a subtle difference: if you somehow consumed pure K-40, then indeed it would also have a comparable half-life. The difference is that the isotopic ratio matches what's already in your body.
Tim [BRAWM Team Member]
Regarding radiation you can
Regarding radiation you can eat as much potassium as you want, the amount of Potassium-40 in your body is stable. Its presence in food may be a good yardstick to compare with other isotopes but it doesn't add to your naturally occurring internal exposure.
One more caveat- Levels in
One more caveat-
Levels in milk may go up. Not the pasture fed Berkeley stuff, but that from "mixed source" feed. I strongly believe that the small bumps up and down in the homogenized "store milk" are from the hay fed to the dairy cows. The hay comes from different areas and times of harvest.
That having been said, the highest Cs activity in milk tested by UCB was right around 1 bq/l. Looking at my original post, the amount of "radiation" ingested from Cs in milk would still be dwarfed by the amount of radiation from naturally occurring K40.
I am looking to source some Cali homegrown dairy. Perhaps have the soil independently tested
Let's not get confused over
Let's not get confused over radiation from natural occurring elements (that Earth's inhabitants have adapted to) and the radiation emitted by man-made ionizing isotopes.
Potassium is a good thing. Cesium definitely is not. Your body needs potassium to balance sodium. Your muscles need it for proper contraction and relaxation. Potassium deficiency can cause muscle cramps, high blood pressure and water retention. You don't want cesium taking potassium's place, do you? Of course not.
Potassium Orotate is a good form, as gets into cells better than other sources.
"Let's not get confused over
"Let's not get confused over radiation from natural occurring elements (that Earth's inhabitants have adapted to) and the radiation emitted by man-made ionizing isotopes."
Yeah, let's eat Uranium for breakfast.
Uh, uranium is not man made
Uh, uranium is not man made and is found in the air and ground naturally. Also, radiation from "man-made" isotopes is no different than radiation from natural isotopes. Also, all man made isotopes occur in nature, but they just decay too quickly for us to see them.
If specific isotopes occur
If specific isotopes occur in nature only very rarely and/or where humans do not tend to tread, eat, and breathe, safe to say we have not evolved to handle them, call them as natural as you please.
We are evolved to handle
We are evolved to handle radiation. It doesn't matter what isotope it comes from, we are evolved to handle the damage.