Your Guide to Radiation Sources and Doses

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Understanding the basics of radiation is not easy. With the media full of news about the failed nuclear power plant at Fukushima Japan, we are all confronted with the daunting challenge of trying to make sense out of what we see on TV and read in newspapers and blogs.

I created this chart Your Guide to Radiation Sources and Doses to provide a quick reference to the comparative intensity of radiation sources and doses. The units of measurement to describe the potency of radiation gets tricky right off the bat. This chart uses both the United States system and the metric system, making it easy to cross check with measurements you see or hear in the media. Rems and millirems are units of radiation used in the United States. Sieverts and millisieverts are units used in the metric system. You see them in the chart right next to each other.

The chart places the most potentially dangerous sources and doses of radiation at the top. At the bottom of the chart are the more common sources of radiation that we all encounter on a regular basis in our daily lives, no matter where we live on the plant.

The chart is a compilation of educational, scientific and governmental publications. Sometimes they do not agree in detail among themselves. Editorial decisions are necessary to round out the slight discrepancies.

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I got thinking about the Cold War in the 1950s and early 60’s, when the US government mobilized a nation to prepare for the “Big One” that never came. We all learned how to climb under our desk at school. Our parents joined the Civil Defense to stand on top of the local town’s bank buildings and scan the skies with binoculars to look for Russian bombers.

Now, we have a nuclear threat to our country that is potentially greater. Yet the giant government and media machines are hard at work to coat it with invisible paint and make it disappear. Low radiation. No threat. Not harmful. These are the same people who tell us it is OK to swim in the Gulf. How do the families of the dead victims of the Gulf’s Blue Plague respond the government’s and media’s current spin to assuage the public’s fears?

Contrary to the government’s and media’s spin, Dr. Mark Sircus and other professional medical people tell us “there is no such thing as safe radiation” and “one particle of plutonium in your lung can cause cancer.”

How can our poor little pea brains handle such contrary points of view?

In the the 50’s the government taught us to climb under our desk for a few minutes in a drill. Now, the government wants us to be ostriches. Stick your head in the ground and don’t look up.

The spinsters want to make it seem that we live with “background radiation” all the time and it is OK. No, it kills! Why do dermatologists tell us to cover up outdoors in the sun? How many human beings are dying right now from melanoma they got from “background radiation?”

Doesn’t anyone want to tackle the qualitative differences between radiation from different kinds of radioactive elements? Can the EPA or Wolf Blitzer tell me it a brick or rock gives off the same kind of radiation as a uranium fuel rod?

Here is my question: would the government of Japan or US tell us, if they found radioactive isotopes of plutonium in the seawater? They like reporting on iodine isotopes with half lives of a few hours or days. When the devil’s sperm, namely plutonium 239, shows up in the radioactive concoction floating off Fukushima, will his handlers release the news?

Government advice: Avoid bricks and rocks, but don’t worry about the radioactive iodine and cesium falling on your neighborhood. And plutonium, don’t ask.

No Such Thing as "Safe" Radiation

There is no safe level of radiation exposure.
Jeff Patterson, former president of Physicians for Social Responsibility

It is the inability to see the effects of chronic,
 low level toxicities on human health that has been,
 and remains, our greatest failing as intelligent beings.
Dr. Boyd Haley

“A growing body of animal research suggests to some scientists that even minute traces of some chemicals, always assumed to be biologically insignificant, can affect such processes as gene activation and the brain development of newborns.
WSJ quoted by Dr. Mark Sircus blog

An especially striking finding: It appears that some substances may have effects at the very lowest exposures that are absent at higher levels.
WSJ quoted by Dr. Mark Sircus blog

The new science of low-dose exposure is challenging centuries of accepted wisdom about toxic substances and rattling the foundation of environmental law.
WSJ quoted by Dr. Mark Sircus blog

There is no safe level of mercury, and no one
 has actually shown that there is a safe level.

Dr. Lars Friberg, Chief adviser to WHO on mercury safety

There is no safe level of radiation.
Dr. Mark Sircus Low Level Toxicity

Children and unborn babies most at risk of possibly developing cancer from low toxicity.
Dr. Mark Sircus Low Level Toxicity

Inhaling or ingesting only one radioactive particle of plutonium can cause cancer.
Dr. Mark Sircus Blog

Will the radiation spread?” asks one headline. Radiation always spreads is the answer. 
It is in its very nature to do so.
Dr. Mark Sircus Low Level Toxicity

Radiation From Japan Crosses USA

Nuclear Salmon Made in Japan

Tokyo. March 22, 2011. Abnormally high levels of radioactive substances have been detected in seawater near the quake-crippled nuclear power plant in Japan, its operator said early Tuesday, cited by AFP. Five kinds of radioactive materials, including iodine-131, cesium-134 and cobalt, released by damaged fuel rods, were detected in the sea.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said the level of iodine-131 was 126.7 times higher and cesium-134 was 24.8 times higher than government-set standards. Cesium-137 was 16.5 times higher

The government limit is based on the amount of radioactive material that can be consumed by a person for a year, which is 1 millisievert. Although iodine-131 has a radioactive half-life of eight days, cesium-137's half-life is about 30 years.

At 2:30 p.m. Monday, TEPCO collected 500 milliliters of seawater at a point 100 meters south of the outlet, from which waste liquid is drained into the sea.

A total of 5.066 becquerel of iodine-131 per milliliter was detected, a level 126.7 times more than the yearly limit a person can safely ingest as set by the Nuclear Reactor Regulation Law.

If a person ingested two liters of water at this level of contamination over a three-day period, it would be equivalent to being exposed to an annual dose of radiation according to government-set safety standards, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.

According to TEPCO, the operator of the crippled nuclear plant, there are two possible causes of the seawater contamination.

One is that the radioactive materials, blasted into the air after explosions at buildings housing the plant's Nos. 1 and 3 reactors, spread toward the Pacific and entered the sea when it rained. The other possible cause is that the water sprayed onto the Nos. 3 and 4 reactors washed the radioactive materials into the sea.

In a phenomenon called biological concentration, radioactive materials in seawater will become more concentrated in fish and marine plants.

The substances were detected in seawater which was sampled Monday about 100 kilometres (60 miles) south of the Fukushima No.1 plant. The radiation has spread to a wider area in the ocean beyond the immediate zone of the power plant raising alarm over impact on seafood.

However officials say it is too early to assess the radiation's impact on sea products.
Nevertheless seafood imports from Japan have dropped with some Korean retailers blocking sales altogether.