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Sukree Sukplang / Reuters
An official from Thailand's Food and Drug Administration takes a sample from a shipment of frozen fish imported from Japan to test for possible radiation contamination at a customs station in Bangkok today.
Experts say that fish and other marine species shouldn't be as affected by Japan's nuclear crisis as species on land, in part because of differences in the ways radiation is dispersed.
But that doesn't mean authorities can ease up on monitoring the sea and its bounty for contamination. To the contrary: Inspectors around the world are keeping a close eye on food imports from Japan, and some countries have ordered special inspections or even outright bans on fish coming from areas near the plant.
Twenty days after Japan's earthquake and tsunami touched off a breakdown and partial meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex, some radiation experts are still struggling to get an accurate read on the situation.
"My basic feeling is that they're going to come to grips with this, and at the end of the day, it's not going to be as bad as people fear," said Florida State University oceanographer William Burnett, an expert on the environmental effects of radioactivity. "Having said that, trying to follow this story has been difficult. I see almost no real data."
The most reliable measurements have been coming from the International Atomic Energy's daily updates on the situation, said Andrew Maidment, a professor of radiology and chief of the physics section at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. So get ready for some real data.
The latest fish radiation readings are above background levels, but still nowhere near the safety limits. The highest radiation reading for fish from the Japanese port of Choshi was 3 becquerels per kilogram of cesium-137 — far below Japan's limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram, or Bq/kg.
"This confirms what scientists including myself have been saying: First of all, the water will dilute this, and the uptake will therefore be lower than it would be for a terrestrial animal," Maidment told me. "The greater the volume of water, the higher the dilution, and the lower the impact."
When radioactive fallout is dispersed on land, it collects on what is essentially a two-dimensional carpet of vegetation, to be ingested later by livestock or humans. But when the fallout reaches the sea, it's dispersed in a much deeper three-dimensional space.
Maidment said this phenomenon was seen clearly in the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, which still ranks as more of an environmental catastrophe than Fukushima: Wild boars that were tested within a 30-kilometer radius of the Chernobyl site registered 470,000 Bq/kg of cesium-137, while freshwater perch showed concentrations of 4,000 Bq/kg. Eight years later, the levels were reduced to 5,000 Bq/kg for the boars, and 200 Bq/kg for the perch. Even those levels are unpalatably high, but they illustrate Maidment's main points: Marine life tends to absorb less radiation, and contamination levels go down over time.
Yardsticks for radiation
Let's take a moment to talk about the radiation standards: When we're talking about the absorbed dose for humans, that tends to be expressed in terms of millisieverts. For example, the typical annual radiation dose from natural sources amounts to roughly 3 millisieverts.
But when we're talking about the radioactivity contained in various substances, the standard measure is becquerels per kilogram or per liter. The safety standards vary according to what type of radioisotope we're talking about, the type of substance we're talking about, and the type of person who might come in contact with that substance. That's because there's a wide range of variation in the uptake of radioisotopes and their effects on the body.
Here are the safety limits set by Japan's Food Safety Commission and reported by Bloomberg:
- Iodine-131: 300 Bq/kg for drinking water, milk and dairy products. 2,000 Bq/kg for vegetables except for root vegetables and tubers.
- Radioactive cesium: 200 Bq/kg for drinking water, milk and dairy products. 500 Bq/kg for vegetables, grains, meat, eggs and fish.
- Uranium: 20 Bq/kg for infant foods, drinking water, milk and dairy products, 100 Bq/kg for vegetables, grains, meat, eggs and fish.
- Alpha-emitting nuclides of plutonium and transuranic elements: 1 Bq/kg for infant foods, drinking water, milk and dairy products. 10 Bq/kg for vegetables, grains, meat, eggs and fish.
Materials exceeding 100 Bq/kg should not be used as the basis for powdered infant milk formula.
Close to the Fukushima plant, the radiation levels are alarming: The IAEA said samples of seawater collected 330 meters east of the nuclear complex's discharge point showed iodine-131 concentrations of 74,000 becquerels per liter, roughly equivalent to Bq/kg. The cesium levels were 12,000 Bq/kg for cesium-137 and another 12,000 Bq/kg for cesium-134. But those levels drop sharply with distance, due to the dispersion factor.
Radioactive iodine-131 is a huge concern for people living around the Fukushima plant, because that can be quickly taken up into the thyroid and pose a significant cancer risk. What's more, iodine is taken up readily by seaweed, which is a popular food item in Japan. Elevated (but still safe) levels of radioactive iodine have been detected in seaweed as far away as Vancouver, and in milk samples from Spokane, Wash. (The reading for the milk was 0.8 picocuries per liter, or roughly 0.03 Bq/kg.)
The flip side is that iodine-131 has a relatively short half-life of eight days, so as time passes, the iodine risk should drop significantly for fish as well as for people.
Cesium-137 has a longer half-life (30 years), so it poses a longer-lived threat. The fish tests suggest that the cesium radiation levels are just one-tenth of the iodine levels, Maidment said.
Stay focused on the fish
Authorities will have to be extra-vigilant about watching radiation levels from Fukushima for a long time — on the ground, in the air and at sea, said Edwin Lyman, a senior staff scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an activist group.
"Even dilute levels of contamination can be enhanced in certain marine life, you know, just like mercury concentrates in large fish, like tuna," he told reporters during a briefing on Monday. "Also, plants like seaweed are known to concentrate certain isotopes, and so are certain types of shellfish. But I would think certainly in the fishing industry in the region, they're most likely going to have to take measures to inspect their catches, and I guess the primary responsibility for that will have to be with the Japanese to inspect and interdict any contaminated seafood."
Maidment agrees that more monitoring will be needed. He also suspects that shellfish living on the seabed around Fukushima might face more contamination than the fish that just happen to migrate through the seas near the stricken plant. But he says "it's too early to draw conclusions," and he emphasizes that the general public needs to put the radiation issue in perspective.
For example, suppose that your drinking water contained 100 becquerels per liter, which is basically 100 Bq/kg. "If that water constituted 10 percent of your dietary intake of food, by weight, and you consumed that exclusively per year, you would increase your background radiation by about 20 percent," Maidment said. "I can double my background radiation just by moving from Philadelphia to Denver. So these are levels of radiation that most of us are not aware of."
I'm betting that you're more aware of the radiation issue than you were 20 days ago, and that you have some thoughts you'd like to share. Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.
Update for 12:55 a.m. ET March 31: One of my Facebook friends, Lynda Williams (the Physics Chanteuse), points out that I have not actually defined what a becquerel is. One becquerel is a unit of radioactivity that's equal to one nuclear decay per second. Here's the way she put it: "It is one atom of a radioactive isotope decaying and emitting radioactive decay. So 5,000 Bq/kg means that 10,000 atoms are decaying per second and shooting off a particle per second in one kilogram. So if the pig has a mass of 100 kilograms, we are talking about a whole body exposure of — do the math, 500,000 particles shooting through its body every second. The 'data' means more if you explain what it really means." Thanks, Lynda!
More angles on radiation:
- Seattle physicists detect radioactivity, fear it'll wreck experiment
- Japanese evacuees' new woe: Radiation prejudice
- World Blog: Tokyo fishmonger fears more radiation leaks
- Cosmic Log recap on the disaster in Japan
- Msnbc.com's special report on the disaster
Join the Cosmic Log community by clicking the "like" button on our Facebook page or by following msnbc.com science editor Alan Boyle as b0yle on Twitter. To learn more about my book on Pluto and the search for planets, check out the website for "The Case for Pluto."
Leave a Comment:
Trusting a government agency to tell you what the safe limits are is about as reassuring as trusting them to provide accurate readings to start with. How many times has the government discovered that what they thought were safe levels of a contaminant turned out not to be so safe. It is impossible to avoid all radiation, since background radiation is all around us. However, staying away from foods that are known to contain higher than normal levels seems to be a prudent thing to do.
I don't trust the private sector in this country to tell us of their manipulation of the truth. They cry--"too much regulation!" We have the same aged nuclear reactors in this country. They are unsafe and a ticking time bomb.
I agree. How convienent to blame the Jananese incident on increased levels of radition. It would be interesting to see what the weekly, monthly, whatever readings are and detail when they spiked.
Radiation is CUMULATIVE. One pint of milk and one spinach salad is ridiculous to use as a measurement. These levels will accumulate in the human body every time they are ingested. Multiple a child having 1 pint of milk every day for 365 days a year. That's a more realistic amount of contamination.
sandtrich, people are naturaly concerned about thing's that they do not understand, I as well am concerned, mainly because I like so many don't trust the government to do the inspection,s as they should, as to the private sector, they are going to adhear to the inspection's that the government, require's, wink wink, that's just the problem we have people in the government that are assigned a task, they don't alway's do, instead they let the money do the talking, and sweep the rest under the rug, they need to be held accountable for the task's they are supposed to be doing, no matter what you choose to go green with if you don't inspect what you expect then none of it get's done properly, it's called being lazy and not taking pride in what you do, I knew fruit grow's way back in the 70's that had stand's by the road side, that were supposed to be inspected, they would alway's say that they would waive at the inspector as he drove by and if he stoped it was nothing to get rid of him for a hundred dollar's, so there you have it, and I'm suire that that does not just pertain to the fruit business. Now do you see why the government is not trusted. The private sector will do only what they are told they have to so it's not just the private sector that's involved in this.
Are you scared to get in your car and drive to a quicky mart?
No?
But doesn't flying in an airplane scare you a little?
We know that driving is far more dangerous than flying, but driving doesn't scare us.
It's the same with Nuclear Power. It seems scarier, but it's safe. Only 3 people have died in the US from Nuclear power.
3 people died in a year installing windmills.
I just watched a report on CNN where the expert being interviewed said that the radiaiton levels in milk are so low that there isn't any danger. This is what we were told during the 50s and 60s when they were doing the atmospheric a-bomb testing in the Nevada desert. We were told that the radiation we would receive was not more than we get from the sun. Then the children died of leukemia, the women got breast cancer. Sheep lost their wool and bore deformed lambs. There was a huge government cover up. If you protested you were called unAmerican - it was the McCarthy era. We are downwind of Japan. Utah was downwind of the Nevada testing site. I suggest you believe nothing you hear when reassured that the readings are safe. Don't let your children drink the milk.
Ryan in Texas: A great analogy, and it's a fact. As far as the fish over there go, probably not any worse now than before the quake..
Sorry but I trust a government agency - with all its limitations - more than a private one, as the tobacco story should have taugh us. I do not expect Monsanto to tell me that their genetically modified crops could damage my health or the environment, I do not expect a company with ties to the energy industry to bring bad news about dangers inherent in nuclear plants, incluyding radiation levels in the food that I have no choice but eat
right on.....any lie is far better then the TRUTH....who said that? Hess, Gorbbles or was it Hitler himself?
Well what the hell....we elect idiots to represent us...(well most of them are)...and they do what they want, both parties......
You got a Senator who can't live on a 174K salary, plus his travel, health, postage, meals and pension for free.....not to mention all the time off with pay... and he's still paying off his student loans??????....gradulated in 1990, tv actor, lawyer, wife who is on tv and an author...God if that was you or me we'ed be in the work house as Scrouge said.....banks won't refinance your mortage because your old (64) and work part time.....but they'll take OUR LOANS so they can get bigger.... then they cry when people want to know the truth about what's going on......their attitude is "You can't take the truth, according to GS, JPMCase, Wells Fargo....etc."
Remember what Jefferson said "There comes a time when the Tree of Liberty must be replenished with the Blood of Patriots and TRYANTS" may not be an exact quote....but you got the Idea!
Radiation has a half life, the body has an elimination half life. Cumulative is not cumulative. The radioactivity gets halved over time and the amount of the material in the body gets halved over time. I used to know an equation for this, but it's been 17 years since I've been in that field and took the annual radiological control training that was required.
(from Lynda)"It(1 bequerel) is one atom of a radioactive isotope decaying and emitting radioactive decay. So 5,000 Bq/kg means that 10,000 atoms are decaying per second and shooting off a particle per second in one kilogram."
I believe that should read: "It is one atom of a radioactive isotope decaying and emitting radioactive decay. So 5,000 Bq/kg means that 5,000 atoms are decaying per second and shooting off a particle per second in one kilogram."
Lynda appears to arrive at the correct final fgure of 500,000 particles per second in a pig of 100 kg.
Interesting article. Keep up the good work.
Well I was hungry a few minutes ago, think I'm gonna pass on a late night snack though. I feel really bad for the japanese nation. We should get ready, they are going to need a lot more help very soon than anyone wants to admit and they are a very proud people, not likely to ask for it. One thing that would help right now is a quick way to visualize the radiation present....some sort of flourescent screen that you could hold over an object and see flashes from the beta alpha or gamma particles...probably easier than it would appear if we could just focus on the concept...I can't right now but if some one is looking for an invention from neccesity, get on it now.
The BP oil spill and the Japanese reactor both show that the so-called professionals and experts are, in reality, ill-equipped and totally un-prepared to handle any kind of disaster - be it man-made or natural.
And as one scientist pointed out, the lack of accurate information coming from TEPCO and the Japanese government is cause for alarm. History has shown that governments and the corporations involved in a disaster tend to downplay the effects of the disaster, and often have covered up information that they deemed to be damaging to themselves, their image, and their "bottom line".
I think the Russian worker who survived years of work to clean up the Chernoble disaster, and watched nearly all of her co-workers die from radiation poisoning and cancer in the process, gave the Japanese people sound advice when she told them to "get away as quickly as you can". She too, observed that the government was not honest in that situation either.
And the Japanese people should NOT BE FOOLED by their government or TEPCO telling them to "stay indoors" and they'll be OK. The fact is, it's IMPOSSIBLE to keep the radio-active particles out of the homes and buildings, and these poor people are being subjected to radiation exposure even though they're inside.
yea, Rick I look at some of the young people over there and wonder just how many will have to suffer in the future or even if they have a future, being a victom of Cancer, I know what it can do to you health wise and mentally, it can do the unthinkable if your not prepared, of course I'm mush older now and have for the most part spent my life, I really feel for those little one's that today do not know any better, but some time in the future will pay a heavy price for something that some one else did to them, that they had no control of, it is such a shame, so bright and shinny today with a whole life in front of them, that may be cut short for no good reason, that's a whole race of proud people were talking about, Rick I can only hope that there is truly some thing that can be done for them.
The media is guilty of sensationalism on the one hand, and frequently appealing to scientists (and some are called so loosely) on the other:
The media's desperation to make this the next Chernobyl:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/25/fukushima_scaremongering_debunk/
Why the media loves a good disaster story:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/22/fukushima_tuesday_2/
I've actually noticed that a fair number of these "NUKE CRISIS WORST EVER! GODZILLA CERTAIN!" articles have no comment area available. Wonder if they're tired of getting called on their crap?
I know that one of the above articles points out that those who claim the Japanese government and TEPCO aren't being up front are disingenuous. The info is out there - the media is just too lazy to look it up. Plus, real numbers are no fun when trying to spin a story.
The real disaster here (and the one that is still terribly undersold) is that these people were hit by a 9.0 quake, and then a 10-15m tsunami - killing thousands and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.
tuxkevin, your first link to a story in The Register says:
I'm an astrophysicist - not a nuclear physicist, but close enough that I've got a pretty fair idea what is going on.
In my judgment the situation was NOT "brought under control days ago", it is not under control now, and I would not care to predict when it will be "under control".
We have yet to see a day when the news from Fukushima Dai-ichi is better than the day before.
I do agree with you, based on the limited information that we have, that the constant stream of Newsvine posts I've been reading that characterize the workers at Dai-ichi as "the walking dead" is extremely overstated. Also unwarranted are comments I've seen posted about "Japan will be uninhabitable" and the like, along with "my dogs in Oregon are sick from Dai-ichi radiation.
The Register and I must be watching different media. While I've seen errors of reporting that have made me groan, I seen very little over-hyping of the dangers (the only thing I've seen along those lines was CNN's Nancy Grace, who was way over the top, but I think that she did so out of personal ignorance rather than an effort to hype beyond the facts).
Cheers! ~Michael (AFM*Radio / Astronomy.FM)
For some perspective, the total number of deaths due solely to radiation exposure from the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombs has been noted as not exceeding 4,000 in other MSNBC articles. Chernobyl has been estimated to have exposed over 800,000 people to elevated radiation, resulting in fewer than 800 deaths due to long- and short-term radiation effects. Nobody has died or is expected to die from the radiation released at TMI (Three Mile Island). In the US alone, there are many, many thousands of deaths each year from air pollution due to buring of coal for electricity. Some fraction of these deaths can reasonably be attributed to the massive amount of radioisotopes released by the burning of coal. My resident nuclear physicist/wife has stated she would gladly volunteer for relief duty in the evacuation zones, given the very low levels of radiation being found. While the reported values are proportionally high (10,000 times normal, or some such), those numbers are meaningful only in regards to exposure limits. The use of apparently enormous numbers in headlines, while requiring a person to read the entire article in order to put those numbers in perspective, is just one more example of the mass media presenting information in the way which will be most startling, rather than honestly informative. Boyle gets points from me for his technical accuracy, bu whoever writes his headlines should be required to read the National Enquirer 8 hours a day for a year.
So, John, if "...so-called professionals and experts are, in reality, ill-equipped and totally un-prepared to handle any kind of disaster - be it man-made or natural...," who, then, is well equipped? Should we, as you did, simply pick out lone voices that happen to opine as do we? Why bother looking for information if we're only going to pick out what conforms to what we wish to believe?
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
We're detecting 3 bq/kg in the fish, when 500 bq/kg is considered the limit.
Run away! Run away!
Is anything really safe anymore. There is polution of every kind all over the world. Yes, technology has made it possible to feed more people, but the food quality leaves much to be desired. Fish are dangerous because of mercury and other stuff, now radiation. Almost on a weekly basis, we here about some food contamination. It's nutz. You need to eat, but if you do, it'll kill you.
Like a plane crash, a nuclear disaster makes for alot of hysteria and calls for tighter regulations or in this case of nuclear power, a ban on it while the reality is that nuke power is far cleaner and safer than coal power. Flying is far safer than driving yet when 116 people get squished each and every day on our roads in the US it does not even make the news, but let an airliner crash and kill 116 people and its a catastrophe. What people do not realize is that the health effects from coal buring power plants on a global scale are far more serious than a reactor going south. The local damage is great and there could be thousands of deaths as a result of the nuclear accident but gloabally it is far less.
DEar Andy - there's no comparison because the radioactivity can get you 10 years from now. Radioactivity is cumulative in the body. A little milk here, a little fish there and voila cancer, but not right away. I'm with you on the coal burning plants, but they can be cleaned up if the industry and government regulators so desire, but there's no clean up of nuclear waste. Read up on "Downwinders" and see their fates. You can Google it.
Andy--my son is a USN Officer with a Master's in Nuclear Management from Old Dominion and 14+ years in the field. He is a man of knowledge and he knows that our plants are unsafe, to hell with Nuclear Power. The USN uses safeguards because they are not in the "profit business". Out shilling for corporate America mighty early this morning?
Andy, you speak of collateral damage, of which I am very much or should I say to much aware of, I do believe that the power of choise should be as healthy as it can be, and nuclear may not be the only answer but a combination of oil, wind, solor, coal and nuclear, spread though out the country where it can be best used should be, instead of banning one for another why not use all the resource's we have, we are still mining and drilling and making solor panales, and designing nuclear plant's are we not let's use them where they make the most sense, our problem is that we are not thinking of what's best for the country we are thinking what best for the industry that is lobbing the hardest and we need to stop doing that, it's not about the money now and it should be about the job's that are created and the countries best interest.
NUKE WORKER
And once again we have an expert telling us background radiation at Denver etc. (which is predominately Cosmic rays) can be equated to a radionuclide decaying inside you near a vital organ. IT IS NOT! Also, a fast decaying atom, if inside us, is not an advantage since the decay products are higher enegy and mutate or kill more cells. The regulators will also say stack emmission near the boundary fence is less than a chest xray a year which is the same "equating" fallacy. DON'T INGEST ANY MEASURABLE AMOUNT OF RADIONUCLIDES for best results.
Sandtrich, my spouse is a formy Navy nuke officer, probably taught your son physics at Nuclear Power School, and has written safety and emergency manuals for naval reactors. While she is forthright about the hazards inherent in nuclear power, she is also very optimistic that nuclear is a far better option than our ongoing dependence on fossil fuels.
Alan:
Many people might be more familiar with the original unit of radioactivity, the Curie (Ci; named after Madame Curie for her work with Radium, whereas the Becquerel was named after the original discoverer of radioactivity). It was standardized in metric units a long time ago, and derives from the total radioactivity of one gram of Radium. It's value is now defined as 3.7 X 10^10 disintegrations/second, and thus 1.0 Ci = 3.7 X 10^10 Bq. It is a much more convenient unit, and the common sub-unit is the milliCurie (1/1000 Ci). Instead of having to talk about thousands of megaBq, it is far easier to work with more convenient units of Curies and milliCuries. The Bq unit has become far more commonplace in Europe/Japan, while the Ci unit is still used frequently in the US.
Likewise, the Rad and the Rem have been supplanted by the Gray and the Sievert for no apparent valid reason. They are related as follows: 100 Rads = 1 Gray; 100 Rems = 1 Sievert. The original units are easier to remember as they are derived from the words that explain their meaning. I.e., Rad is short for Radiation Absorbed Dose, and is the amount of ionizing radiation absorbed per gram of matter. Likewise, the Rem is short for Rad Equivalent Man, and relates the biological effect in (hu)man of the varying types of radiation, if the energy deposition is equivalent.
Most of the good scientific literature is in these units, but during the past ten years, there has been a large increase in usage of the 'newer' units of Bq, Gy (Gray) and Sv instead of Ci, Rad, Rem.
When is Ann Coulter going to make good on her statements? She said radiation is good for you. She needs to go bathe in the ocean off the coast of Fukushima.
...Dear God - where's it all going to end? Rosalee go into the other room and get the crossbow...
Do the fish glow in the dark yet??
Remember that Commissar Obama said this week ** repeat ** THIS WEEK that the answer to America's electric power need is Nuclear Power - in spite of the recent events in Japan. Maybe YOU elected that moron, but I know I didn't...
Given that the alternatives are not ready to serve an energy-hungry (or -dependent) nation, I would say that nuclear energy will continue to be a large part of Japan's electric power needs as well.
What a piece of non-journalistic crap.
"Is the Sushi glowing?" is just inflammatory.The article is impossible to follow (I did have college chem and physics). Why didn't you convert comparisons between standards and readings into fractions or percentages to have real meaning for the average person like yourself?????? OR have someone who is more intelligent and thoughtful helping you?
This is a prime example of how a writer can have, "Garbage in -garage out"
Your editor should be ashamed for publishing this piece. You informed no one.
Dayummmm BOB-353996 has not yet discovered despite all that thar book larnin that statistics (fractions and percentages in particular in this case) are and can be manipulated to serve the desired end result? However he did provide a very excellent example of garbage in garbage out with his diatribe albeit a brief one.
You could be assured that there are no bacteria or food born bugs in their fish products.
Not after a healthy dose of plutonium--but fish worms from suishi and that little nasty algae toxin, well that's cultural.
The USDA has been ordered by the Obama Administration to revise new daily nutritional guidelines to include the modern view of mandatory daily requirements of healthy substances such as, raw crude oil, plutonium, cesium and strontium 90. We all know that old views that these substances are not toxic but are required for proper digestion, skin tone and political correctness--Remember Disney execs found the first 3 headed pigs in where? In Chernobyl!
I just returned from the greater Tokyo area where I was there for a client, performing my own radionuclide analysis on various items due to the lack of reliable data concerning actual numbers being available from the Japanese Govt. I'm really sick of hearing the 100x this and 1000X that, etc. I'd like to see some actual air concentrations at various distances and directions across the affected region as well as information as to how and with what instrumentation they were collected. Until the Japanese Govt releases data like this, it will be difficult to have much faith in any information coming out of there.
This food is not safe. The problem is the accumulation over a 10 yrs period.
In the seventies, we were told there was no such thing as a safe exposure to radiation. Radiation within the body causes the release of free radicals which can cause cancer. Now the "officials" are telling us that there are "safe" measures of radiation that we can be exposed to. I'm not sure about that one.
Additionally, we have been polluting the skies and oceans. There are no fish caught today from the ocean without trace levels of mercury, which is another poison to our body. So how much can our skies and oceans tolerate before we get sick immediately from an exposure? Should we accept what has happened and convince ourselves that there is no danger? Or should we be honest and begin to understand the toll that has been introduced to the earth through our own negligence, that is bringing harm to us? And in the future will be more devastating to generations to follow.
It's like putting sugar in your tea of coffee, and stirring it up. Eventually, this radiation will be everywhere, and who knows where? When you watch the weather, the sattelite photo of the Jetstream shows that it seems to blow from Japan to the West coast of the US.....I don't know how they can say there's no danger to the US, because plutonium is the most toxic thing there is. The odds of getting cancer if you inhale a tiny bit are 1 to 1. This catastrophe outshadows everything else that is going on, Libya, etc..this is the number 1 priority to bring this under control, for the sake of our survival.
1 to 1...really? You got a credible reference for this? I did 6 yrs research in metabolic modeling of plutonium and other actinides in humans and that's not even close. Look up the beagle studies done at the Univ. of Utah or the NIOSH Dose Reconstruction Project being done under the Energy Employees Compensation Act. The information is out there, you just have to willing to look.
Rick, you are correct only in that the probability of death is 100%. The probable causes of death are given on the CDC website, with cancer accounting for approximately 30%. So, all other things being equal, you have a 3 in 10 chance of dying of cancer of any kind. The probability of an US resident dying from cancer due to exposure to the byproducts of the nuclear power industry is effectively zero. I live at over 4,300 feet among granite mountains, and the difference between my exposure to background radiation and that of my brother in Sacramento far exceeds the total exposure of most Japanese to radiation from the Fukushima plant. Get real.
Further reading at the CDC revises the number of deaths due to cancer at around 15% of total. This places the risk of dying from nuclear-energy-caused cancer even lower.
This is a terrible event that can affect all live forms on the planet. With that said, we need to study more on the effects it has on sea life, our food source. The comment made by a Dr. in Florida mentioned that there is not enough data. Well, I say to him here is your chance to go over to Japan and help those people to collect data and study this stuff if it is your specialty.
This is the time for all the experts around the world to gather and help the Japanese (e.g. collecting data) so we can be prepared and avoid future disasters like this. Dont sit there and say we don't have enough data. Those Japanese that are dead sure don't have the time to collect the data for the rest of the world to review.
Those people died so unexpectedly. Just imagine if that happened to you/your family. Wow...
The real question is... When will it be safe for the Japanese to resume the slaughter of dolphins and whales!!!
All of Asia is overpopulated anyhow, let them get cancer in the coming years and die... Whoopidy F'ing Doo..... They rape and pillage all of the oceans, I hope they all get sick and die... The world will be a better place... Fact: Tiger penis does nothing for the fact your Asian wife has the face of a flat nosed dog... Ugly women and Guys with tiny penis's.. It does seem like a cruel joke. But is it real...
If those nuclear plant workers would have been doing their jobs and not rubbing their tiny wankers watching western porn when they should have been checking the plant for safety concerns and keeping up with safety upgrades over the past few decades this whole disaster could have been avoided... They have been liars about what's really been going on and they have lied about doing the right things for years... They deserve to die a painful and horrible death themselves...
Above post has been reported as a violation of the CoH...
Dude, are you mad?
WoW!!
Well we know they are lying about the radiation levels and the depths to which it has entered the food chain. But it seems like your heart has also been nuked.
The only way this disaster could have been prevented is not to build nuclear plants. But we know that ship has left the harbor.
Where ever money can be made man will continue to attempt to outfox the cosmos, to his detriment. Unfortunately, the innocent suffers for the guilty.
I have been saying for years that we are sitting on a powder keg. This is simply more proof.
That plant was privately owned and the people running it ran it into the ground... Mad? Why do facts seem like I am mad? Mad as in crazy? I'm not crazy and I have no love for Asians... I have seen first hand how they rape and pillage the oceans of the world... We as Americans love to eat cow.. They produce methane that is killing the Ozone...
Man is its own worst enemy... Why should I have to be PC when the real culprits are the ones who let this happen... And yes it is and was all about the money.
Mad no. Cruel yes. Racist yes. Ignorant yes. Pathetic yes.
Radiation is dangerous. So are coal mines, oil refineries, don't get me started on the damage fracking for natural gas is doing. We need to find a simple safe way to turn a wheel. That is what it comes down to.
Solar, wind, tides, thermal all things we should be doing all over the country. But people all say it is ugly, etc...
Nulear has the safest and cleanest track record even with this spill. They will have it cleaned up in less than two month. How long did BP let oil dump into the gulf. How wide spread was that damage?
No easy answers.
You are on to something with the cleanliness of nuclear energy. Yeah!!
It cleans out everything in its path.
Funny thing about Japanese fish... They are swimming inn the Pacific and can go anywhere loaded with radiation... Scary...
I know how we can tell how safe it is to breathe the air or eat certain food in a particular place in Japan. All we have to do is see where the Emperor's family and the family's of those who run the nuclear plant are staying and what they are eating. This is the only way we will ever know. These people are too worried about their wallets to be concerned about the lives of everyone else. Watch what they do- not what they say........
Rick, it's apparent that you do not have your priorities straight. It is obviously much more important to stick our noses into Libyan politics because of the oil over there. We must kiss the right arses if we are going to benefit from anything. Shame on you.
Unfortunately we are all a bunch of armchair quarterbacks that have a lot of advice, but I don't see anyone getting on a plane to go over there and help, myself included. We will continue to use up every resource we have until we hear the giant sucking sound that denotes "empty" when we turn on the spigot to whatever we want to have at the moment. We will then blame our elected officials for it and start writing posts on all kinds of social media to "voice" our dismay and general dissatisfaction. Rinse, repeat. Sad really.