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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| Radiation has entered the food chain in milk and spinach: Japan |
| 2011-03-20 |
| FUKUSHIMA, Japan (AP) — Japan announced the first signs that contamination from its tsunami-crippled nuclear complex have seeped into the food chain, saying that radiation levels in spinach and milk from farms near the facility exceeded government safety limits. More at story from AP. Including a lot about how the amount of radiation is very low, especially from Japanese authorities keen to talk the danger down. Note: The effects of radiation are cumulative. There is no "safe" dose of radiation. Low doses create statistically low incidences of cancer, which increase as the radiation increases. Any increase in radiation levels gives a corresponding increase in the number of cancers, deformities and genetic mutations in a given population, with even low-dose medical X-rays slightly increasing the cancer rate. |
| Posted by:anon1 |
| #20 Anon1 you are a dangerous loon. There are known unsafe doses of radiation, and XKCD posted a nice chart describing relative doses today (http://xkcd.com/radiation/), but low doses of radiation have been shown to be beneficial rather than harmful. This is Ann Coulter, but what she is saying is in fact correct. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FNFF61E_Dg&feature=player_embedded Asserting that low doses of radiation is known to be harmful is both contrary to our current understanding and inflammatory. A couple days ago I explained why you were wrong and why it is important not to frighten people with your lies. Were this my site, you would be banned. |
| Posted by: rammer 2011-03-20 21:57 |
| #19 How about cell phones? Just pocket it near your least favorite organ to be on the safe side. |
| Posted by: Fi 2011-03-20 20:33 |
| #18 Note: The effects of radiation are cumulative. There is no "safe" dose of radiation. Low doses create statistically low incidences of cancer, which increase as the radiation increases. Incorrect. It's well known that living organisms have repair mechanisms, because radiation damage is continual due to natural radiation. A dose which would kill you if experienced in an hour can be tolerated if absorbed over a longer time. |
| Posted by: KBK 2011-03-20 20:28 |
| #17 That's cold, Jefferson. Funny though. ;-p |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2011-03-20 17:14 |
| #16 So I guess the upside is these contaminated products will have a longer shelf life, right? |
| Posted by: Jefferson 2011-03-20 16:28 |
| #15 We po' folks in Colorado, especially those living in or near the mountains, are subjected to even greater amounts of radiation - from radon gas as granite breaks down, and from being just that much closer (anywhere from 3800 feet to 14,000+ feet) to the sun. People in Colorado, on average, are healthier than those in most other areas. |
| Posted by: OId Patriot 2011-03-20 15:07 |
| #14 Interesting graphic here. It's a lot safer, just from a radiation perspective, to live near a nuke plant than coal. But neither is really dangerous. I keep waiting for someone to tell me how much radiation we were exposed to in the 1950s before the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty. Probably the reason for all the problems with boomers. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2011-03-20 14:10 |
| #13 Burning coal tends to release the radioactive contaminants of coal into the atmosphere unless the emissions are specially scrubbed, and I don't know how effective that is or has been. From the amount of coal which has been burned, I would guess many more will have died from radioactive contamination caused by burning coal than have died from fallout from atmospheric testing & all nuclear plant problems combined. No radiation poisoning for electricity! |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2011-03-20 14:05 |
| #12 This is just another reason for Japanese kids to refuse to eat their spinach. Al |
| Posted by: Frozen Al 2011-03-20 13:46 |
| #11 radiation is healthy for you like bananas, and nuclear power is great for everyone Not to worry. Julian will wave his hands and all will be pristine. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2011-03-20 13:22 |
| #10 SteveS: Phytoremediation is very popular research right now. Prosopis juliflora. A whole bunch of trees known for their uptake of copper and cadmium. Sunflowers. Cesium and strontium. Kale, rape, kohlrabi, cucumber, onion, parsley, celery. Thallium. Yellow lupine (modified with bacteria). Toluene. Brassica juncea and Brassica carinata, two members of the mustard family. Chromium, lead, copper, and nickel. Corn, Zea mays, can take up incredibly high levels of lead. Transgenic tobacco uptakes trinitrotoluene (TNT). Alpine pennycress. Zinc, cadmium, and uranium, if soil is treated first with citrate to make the uranium more bioavailable. A pigweed called Amaranthus retroflexus, was up to 40 times more effective than other plants tested in removing radiocesium (cesium-137) if soil is treated first with ammonium. Wheat, corn, and thale cress. Aluminum. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2011-03-20 12:29 |
| #9 Spinach is a plant sponge for metal contaminants Fascinating. Creates some interesting possibilities for bio-remediation. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2011-03-20 11:35 |
| #8 Spinach is a plant sponge for metal contaminants, so much so that growing spinach in contaminated soil is seen as a way to accelerate decontamination. Grow a crop then harvest it and dispose as toxic waste. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2011-03-20 10:15 |
| #7 Nuke power has risks, but US reactors have killed no one - directly. Coal power, on the other hand, kills regularly in coal mining and railroad accidents, and indirectly (sort of like radiation) through lung disease and numerous other diseases. Nuke power costs about one-fourth that of coal, and one-eighth the cost of gas-fired powerplants, and contributes far less to the bane of the 21st century - MANMADE GLOBAL WARMING. Wind power, in addition to killing flying annimals, takes about 60 times the land area of nukes see the WaPo graphic. Life has risks. The intelligent weighing of those risks is ... intelligent. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2011-03-20 08:05 |
| #6 ..radiation is healthy for you like bananas, and nuclear power is great for everyone. It's irrelevant given that radiation is a natural aspect of living in this universe. I'll reiterate that solar radiation kills tens of thousands every year. Yet without it, most living organism on the surface of this planet wouldn't survive. Excess in either direction have consequences. It's just like the planet itself, a little too closer and it'll burn, a little too farther out and it'll freeze. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2011-03-20 04:09 |
| #5 Japanese people eat Japanese food. There isn't a lot of imported produce on shelves like in America. |
| Posted by: gromky 2011-03-20 02:14 |
| #4 Given the critical importance of the Japanese spinach industry to modern civilization, this spells certain doom. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2011-03-20 01:55 |
| #3 Until solid numbers are presented I can't get excited. Any pilot has exposure, as does anyone who has an xray, CAT scan, ect. Food can be washed or quarantined. Just because it can be detected does NOT mean it's dangerous. |
| Posted by: tipover 2011-03-20 01:52 |
| #2 that's right, procopious, who cares what scientists and doctors say... radiation is healthy for you like bananas, and nuclear power is great for everyone. In fact it's grand that Indonesia, sitting on the rim of fire and raddled with graft and corruption, wants to build about 8 of them, including one on top of a volcano. Hopefully they will so that we Australians can get some good healthy radiation just like the bananas give us. We are so lucky the French used to blow up their nukes over Mururoa Atoll and the British at Maralinga, ensuring we would have some healthy atom decay in our food cycle too. |
| Posted by: anon1 2011-03-20 01:35 |
| #1 A banana equivalent dose is a concept occasionally used by nuclear power proponents[1][2] to place in scale the dangers of radiation by comparing exposures to the radiation generated by a common banana. Many foods are naturally radioactive, and bananas are particularly so, due to the radioactive potassium-40 they contain. The banana equivalent dose is the radiation exposure received by eating a single banana. Radiation leaks from nuclear plants are often measured in extraordinarily small units (the picocurie, a millionth of a millionth of a curie, is typical). By comparing the exposure from these events to a banana equivalent dose, a more intuitive assessment of the actual risk can sometimes be obtained. The average radiologic profile of bananas is 3520 picocuries per kg, or roughly 520 picocuries per 150g banana.[3] The equivalent dose for 365 bananas (one per day for a year) is 3.6 millirems (36 μSv). - wattsupwiththat.com Killing me softly with bananas. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2011-03-20 00:10 |