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March 18, 2011
Safe Level of Radiation
1:39 p.m. ET Friday, 2:39 a.m. Saturday in Tokyo] Monitors in Sacramento, California, have detected a small amount of radioactive material from the earthquake-struck nuclear power plant in Japan, an official with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization said. The exact amounts were not available, but were far less than what would be considered harmful to human health, the official said.
Repeat after me. There is no such thing as a "safe" level of radiation. They cannot say that a certain level is not "harmful to human health". That's not how it works. When a radioactive isotope decays and goes shooting through your cells, if your DNA is replicating and it hits the DNA just right, it could cause it to replicate uncontrollably creating what we know as "cancer tumor".
Now, some people have received massive doses of radiation and not developed cancer. Some people have developed cancer from very low doses of radiation. But they can't say "This amount is safe". It doesn't work like that.
Now, we can compare it to natural background radiation, or radiation from the sun, but plenty of people die from skin cancer every year.
Is it safe to drive a car, well most of us accept the risk of driving a car every day, but I know plenty of people that have died in car crashes.
So, I'm no saying I'm thinking the radiation from Japan is a big deal, but don't buy into their "It's a safe level of radiation" story. There is no such thing as a "safe level" of radiation.
Posted by Rob Kiser on March 18, 2011 at 2:11 PM
Comments
....and was the Emperor actually wearing clothes ......???
Posted by: sl on March 18, 2011 at 2:45 PM