Can someone give me a risk analysis of handling manure? Radiation risks for horse owners?
I live in Kansas and clean 8 stalls daily, lift a manure (muck) bucket up (at least eight times a morning) to a dumpster to dump it. Yes, I wear a dust mask but the dust goes everywhere (clothing etc). Brawn provides the round trip equivolent on the site but can someone help me understand the dose equivolent just from being around the stuff. I certainly try not to ingest it.
To make matters worse, horses are bedded on pine shavings from the upper Northwest. I guess I am getting a dose just from being near the manure?
Any advice from the BRAWM
Any advice from the BRAWM team would be appreciated.
Bump
Bump
I am interested in this
I am interested in this subject as well since I live in the dustiest state this side of hell.
Here's something I have been thinking about - I had my soil tested. It came back with about 0.5bq/kg Cs-134 and 6.7bq/kg Cs-137. Figuring that the Cs-134/Cs-137 ratio has been about 1:1, it is likely that the pre-Fukushima cesium content of that soil was ~6bq/kg of Cs-137. Was I afraid of dust before? No. Am I now? Some. What has changed? Mostly, my awareness that there are small amounts of bad things in it.
To take a little further, my soil had a K-40 activity of 1600bq/kg. So if I were to inhale any amount of that dirt, I would be getting more radiation from the K-40 than the Cs-134/Cs-137 by far. This does not address the chemical toxicity of cesium, BTW, and I know very little about that.
That having been said, it is likely that much of the FK fallout is not a settled in as the old stuff, and could be on the top of asphalt, concrete, plants, etc. The availability is a big factor.
Also, there is the "fuel flea/hot particle" issue. If indeed there is a lot of Am-241 or the like, inhaling that crap is a whole different ballgame. The physical nature (ie, non-soluble) of this stuff makes it dangerous in a different way. But so far, no one stateside other than Marco Kaltofen has claimed detection of these materials. UBC as well as University of Washington have both made note that the Fukushima fallout is in many ways made up of less-varied content than Chernobyl, and that everything detected has been the highly-volatile low boiling point stuff.
Did that help? LOL...
horses and dust
I am a horse owner, and I am not as worried about the manure (they are in pasture) as much as the dust they kick up in the soil with fallout, and handling the hay that has now been harvested from spring. As with any dusty dirty sport, should we take precautions more so than before the fallout? I would be interested in BRAWM's opinion on all of this.
I live in Western Montana
I live in Western Montana and help a friends family with the wheat harvest which usually last two weeks. I wear a dust mask when emptying wheat from the truck to the bin (been doing that since before Fukushima)because of allergies. However, it can get pretty dusty when driving large trucks through the fields. I would appreciate an answer from the BRAWM team as to whether myself and the other posters should take extra pre-cautions when working in a dusty environment. Thank You
From our calculations, it
From our calculations, it would take the ingestion of over 200 kg of the manure in order to receive the equivalent of the airplane flight dose that we compare everything to. A calculation of inhalation (not ingestion) would yield a similar estimate.
So I would say that this is a very low radiological risk, but it is always a good idea to wear a mask when working in dusty environment for other health reasons. I hope this helps.
Mark [BRAWM Team Member]