What about that Japanese water?
We’ve been hearing a lot about radioactive water in Japan: dangerous for babies, thyroid cancer. What parent wouldn’t be panicked?
Almost nowhere do we read answers to the following rather mundane and obvious questions: how are the standards for levels of radiation in water set? What do the present levels actually mean in terms of health consequences and risk?
One place we can learn some relevant facts is in this WSJ piece. The environmental paranoia of many people is so high, however, that they wouldn’t believe the following even if they did manage to read it:
Tests Thursday showed a sharply lower level of radioactive material at one water-purifying plant of 79 becquerels per kilogram, less than the 100 becquerels per kilogram level considered acceptable for infants. Tests at the same plant Tuesday and Wednesday showed levels roughly twice those recommended for infants. Tokyo officials Thursday lifted the city’s warning about consumption by infants.
Tokyo’s air Thursday showed radiation lingered at nearly four times the normal level, though still less than a thousandth of what a patient receives in a typical chest X-ray.
Read that last sentence again, and ponder it.
The EPA and others have been moving toward a standard for pollution which depends on the increasing ability to detect the most incredibly tiny amounts of X in Y. Any amount at all is cause for alarm.
Stupid.
Without any perspective of the ratio of radioactivity, the media is doing 99% of Americans who are laypersons in the field of nuclear science a terrible diservice. I’m beginning to think they purposely create confusion so people will think they need to tune in more to figure out what’s going on.
Tokyo’s air Thursday showed radiation lingered at nearly four times the normal level, though still less than a thousandth of what a patient receives in a typical chest X-ray.
I was told that there would be no math …
Quantitative reasoning probably does not come naturally to practically anybody; it has to be taught and constantly reinforced.
Moreover, few people – even among physical scientists – have much appreciation of the relative magnitudes of various phenomena. Instead, they consider phenomena in a binary, does it exist or not, sense, with no consideration of the more apposite question: even if it exists, does it actually make any appreciable difference?
This failing, coupled with garden-variety ignorance among non-scientists about the phenomena involved, is a recipe for hysteria and poor policy making. As a prosaic (and harmless) example, witness the name change years ago to drop the “nuclear” from “nuclear magnetic resonance imaging;” can’t have any nuclei involved!
“At a German Health Spa, Radiation Is King.
Elderly Guests Says Radon Gas Eases Rheumatism, Boosts Sex Lives.”
I say charge extra.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=81664&page=1
“”Elderly Guests Says Radon Gas Eases Rheumatism, Boosts Sex Lives.”
LAG
Which may lead to unsightly image of guys in their stocking feet at airport security gates actually requesting their junk be xray’d.
Yes, but the radiation from a chest X-ray lasts for the short duration required for the exposure while the radiation within the water when consumed stays in the body for what length of time? Which is better, a short burst of high energy or a long burst of lower energy?
RT,
That depends on the isotope and its chemical/biological properties. Obviously, iodine heads towards the thyroid, and if left there long enough will cause a higher localized dose.
Both types of doses can have consequences. The minimum dose set by the government for rad workers, and the population in general, is based on probabilities of long term exposure resulting in cancers and also genetic mutations. High (tens to 100’s of rads) have immediate short temr health effects. Doses in the millirad range have only long term probabilistic effects.
In the ‘old days’ of my graduate studies, myself and another grad student got a small tritium exposure. The treatment?? Drink beer! Worked for me! (the idea was to turn over the net water content of the body as the tritium would most likley attach itself as one of the hydrogens in a water molecule.)
Here’s an op-ed from yesterday’s WSJ:
A Tokyo Reunion
I wonder if it’s just American media that is engaging in fearmongering, or whether the media in other countries is doing it as well. It doesn’t seem to be the case in Japan.
“when consumed stays in the body for what length of time? ”
The biological half-life of I-131 (the radioisotope of concern) is approximately 100 days. I-131 is a beta emitter, it can only cause damage (when consumed) to the target tissue, in this case the thyroid. It is worth consideration to note that the levels reported in drinking water are far below the levels used when injecting I-131 to treat hyperthyroidism and carcinoma thyroid patients.
Infants, because they are rapidly growing organisms, are particularly susceptible to exposure to radiation. However, the levels reported are negligible and the Japanese authorities are just being cautious. There is no serious, or mildly serious problem. To be on the ultra safe side, its fine to advise infants not be exposed to the (low) I-131 levels detected in the water. For all others, its no big deal. Basically, if you’re in Japan and you’re worried about I-131 in the water, you should be much more worried about crossing the street and getting hit by a motor vehicle driven by a lemming seeking the last container of bottled water in Tokyo.
Journalists are first and foremost agitators. They were never just ‘reporters.’ Sometimes they report, sometimes not; but they perpetually seek to agitate.They love a fight; that’s why they never reprt what the legislation says, just who is for, who against, and what the fight is about.
As somebody on another blog noted, starting 1945, we exploded about 900 atomic bombs in Nevada.
Remember fallout? Strontium 90?
Nothing was going to live east of the Rockies but yard-long two-headed cockroaches.
IOW, get a grip.
A: Nobody trusts the “government” to tell the truth about things like this. And why should they. They lie (spin?) about virtually everything else. If they can’t tell the truth about the deficit why the hell should we believe them about anything.
B: “becquerels” IS a scary sounding word. I don’t want ANY oft hose damm becquerels in my child.
C: This stuff is all science… who studies that crap anymore.
Did anybody here ever heard about radiation hormesis? That is, about healthy effects of low-dose radiation? These radon bathes are a clear example of this effect. My teacher in biology, N.V. Timofeev-Resovsky, was a founder of radiation biology, not only in Russia, but worldwide. His classic work (with Moris Delbruck) was the first experiment to estimate physical dimension of a gene. He believed in this phenomenon, while it is hard to test it on humans by understandable reasons, but in mice it works just fine.
One of the things I’m noticing more and more is how alien Japan’s culture is. Take this as an example. Their schools have two festival types, Founding Festival which celebrates the founder from which the school was named after and a sort of spring festival.
During these festivals, each class is tasked with deciding and creating a business. A class that decides to do a short movie will then assemble, film, and employ class members to create the film. Another class can decide on a cafe or baking sales mission goal, and create that atmosphere. Complete with white linen table cloth, uniforms for the waiters and waitresses, homecooked bread and pastries, and so on and so forth.
All of them require “cash” to enter. This is hosted in the specific classroom itself With the preparation, cleaning, maintenance, and management done entirely by the self-elected members of the student body. With supervision by the school wide student’s council, which is supervised and given powers/authority by the teacher’s body.
In one of the versions of the “cafe” theme is the Japanese otaku “maid” style cafes, where all those serving food are female and they wear a maid costume, while serving customers with greetings like “Welcome home, master” in a cute girl voice. I’ve seen that particular one numerous times in manga depictions. One time when it was hosted for actual adults at a convention.
And oh, if you were wondering the age of those involved, this is not college or university. This is high school. This is Japanese high school, from year 10 to our year 12.
So if people are wondering how come Japan is so economically competitive and ambitious, just look at their culture. What are they teaching their kids? A lot of people think the difference in human manpower and training between countries is due to “education”. I say look to the culture. It’s not because blacks are poor, stupid, or “discriminated” against that they do poorly in school .it’s because Afrikan culture is inferior to white culture. And this can be seen in who starves more: Afrika or Europe. Given that Europe has to send food to Afrika….
If there is a difference, look to the culture.
The maid cafes seem to be very popular amongst the customers, which would be high school boys or guests from outside the school.
This is only possible in Japan. You couldn’t do it in Iran. You couldn’t do it in Saudi Arabia. You sure as hell can’t do it in Britain. And not even in America do you see this kind of student freedom, accountability, and Ambition.
The Japanese are alternatively extremely bound by social hierarchy and etiquette, yet also extremely fond of freedom and the power required to exercise freedom.
It would be a mass of contradictions if you did not see the underlying foundation tying it all together for them.
The Japanese, like America, can be restrained and bound and hobbled by stupid Leftist laws and bureaucratic clap trap, for humans are mortal and to err is to be human. Yet, regardless of these underlying factors pulling down the maximum potential of both countries, there is still CULTURE running through it all. As much as the world seeks to change and as much as people seek to un-change it or destroy us through too much change, culture remains constant. Regardless of what political winds may blow, Jacksonians are still Jacksonians. Wilsonians are still Wilsonians. And the Japanese are still the Japanese.
(Just wanted to put that out there given I haven’t commented on the Japanese tsunami/quake here yet)
Sergey, radiation can certainly trigger genes which can trigger health re-vitalization. The negatives are, of course, cancer (although that’s not purely a radiation thing) and dying cells.
Cells are expendable, if non-defective cells are produced to replace them. And here is the trick: small doses seem to promote cell regeneration and train immunological surveillance mechanisms to better distingish “good” cells from “bad’ ones. So, at least in mice and like animals on whom experiments are cheap and quick, even cancer rates are reduced by small-dose irradiation. It is not clear if this can be generalized on humans, because they live much longer and a different dynamics is possible.
Sergey says,
“Did anybody here ever heard about radiation hormesis? That is, about healthy effects of low-dose radiation?”
It has been demonstrated many times in studies using rodents that low level exposures (2 to 4 times background) prolong lifespan. But, as far as I am aware no one has come up with a verifiable model for why this should be so.
It is worth noting that there are several areas in the world where there are concentrations of U and Th in surface rocks & solid that create background levels 10+ times higher than most other areas. I forget exactly where these areas are, but they are in Brazil, west Africa, and India. The residents of these areas do not have higher incidents of birth defects or cancer rates compared to similar populations which live in areas of more ‘normal’ background radiation.
Excuse me…. solid should be soil.
Everybody living above altitude 2.5 km is exposed to natural radiation (cosmic rays and solar ultraviolet) at a dose 50 times more than natural backround level at the sea shore. But these highlanders also have the record number of people of amazing longevity. As for theories of hormesis, it is all about stress and difference between physiological stress and distress. The first makes you stronger, the second makes you weaker. Every radiation effect on biological systems is not direct, it is produced by free radicals, mainly active forms of oxigen. So, essentially it is oxidative stress. But our bodies under any stress (hard work, anxiety, cold, etc.) also produce these free radicals in proportion to high level of metabolism. So radiation exposure at low level is equivalent to workout in gym. Healthy, when is not overdone, and detrimental otherwise.
Actually, sir, I wholeheartedly disagree. We are all the survivors of people who reasoned quantitatively and correctly. Just as with love of learning and reading, though, our schools have taken it upon themselves to turn the populace into drooling idiots who tremble with fear at the idea of math, reading, or critical thinking.
The goal of schools is not to teach kids to do any of these things, it is anathema to that. To make a sheep, you must teach dull, unthinking obedience to authority, and math, reading, and critical thinking are all negative influences towards that goal.
Hence most people are “taught to read” by giving them “old classics” and other suitably boring and insipid things that, instead of making reading enjoyable, make it painful. So many adults stop reading once they get out of high school or college and never pick up books voluntarily again. They associate reading with pain, not pleasure.
Likewise, math — the modern teacher makes people confused about how to think about math by either teaching rote memorization (anathema to the human mental process) or by attempting to do some stupid fixed-path-to-understanding, when each person needs to find their own routing paths for how to think about its concepts effectively. Math becomes associated with pain and humiliation and difficulty… so people never want to do anything with it again once they get out of school. They’ll happily accept the numbers someone else gives them, without really thinking much… because if they actually spotted something wrong, well, hey, they might have to do some math themselves.
Human minds are BUILT for abstract reasoning. It’s one of the things that differentiates us from all other animals — we are able to deal with “meta” on a vastly higher level of complexity than any other creature on earth — the typical 5yo has more inherent understanding of mathematics than the best-trained, full-grown chimp on the planet.
It takes 12 years of serious schooling to beat the desire to think out of people.
BTW, as an example, there was me, in fifth grade. This was the same year (1968) that the movie 2001 came out, so I decided to read it — rather clearly an adult-level book. I did not understand everything I read, and had to ask for help sometimes, but I did get through the whole thing, despite being 10 years old.
Also, in fourth grade, I read ahead and finished the complete science and history textbooks over a three-day weekend.
Despite this rather blatantly self-evident ability to read, I recall getting an “F” in reading at least one term.
Mainly because I refused to read the insipid, uninteresting GARBAGE they tried to force us to read.
They failed with me in their attempts to make me hate reading, and failed utterly.
They don’t fail with most kids, though…
Sergey: The term you’re looking for, among others possibly, is “monazite sands” — I believe they occur in india, as you suggest, but also out in colorado where people already get more radiation exposure than typical from being above a large proportion of the atmosphere.
Another place that debunks the idea that all radiation is bad is Grand Central Station:
Rather clearly — if you wanted to prove radiation dangerous, you could clearly do a health study of people who worked for years in GCS. If radiation were really that bad, then there would be a cancer cluster around the workers there.
However, like Colorado, there is actually a LOWER incidence of cancer among those workers — sufficient to strongly suggest that some exposure is good for you.
Certainly, if the numbers were reversed, you’d never hear the end of the caterwauls about radiation causing cancer.
Two pieces, interrelated — the source data for the xkcd piece was provided to Randall by the person who wrote the second piece.
But both help make it clear what you’re looking at when it comes to radiation exposure, in an at least reasonably approachable way for the layman:
XKCD Chart
A Layman’s Intro to Radiation
I recommend you look at both. At least one, if not both, is likely to help clarify things considerably. The former is graphical, the latter is more textual with a few graphs. Which one appeals better depends on how your mind works.
When Chernobyl reactor exploded, I bought a simple Geiger radiation measurment device. Of course, it could register only gamma-rays and high energy electrons, there was not any number scale, only beeps when radioactive decay occured. When I came down to Moscow underground, where almost all stations are decorated by granite slabs, the device get wild. Then for the first time I became aware that radiation is everywhere, all concrete panels in Moscow high-rises have a granite filler in them. The walls of my flat also triggered my radiation counter, so I stop to fear radiation and began to enjoy life with it.