I was hoping to tell you that the cherry blossom's out and it is in some sunny sheltered spots but it's been cold these past few days. The famous weeping cherry trees in Miharu won't be in flower till the end of the week. NHK had everything set up prime time Saturday evening: a one hour live programme under the floodlit 1,000 year old Takizakura (literally 'waterfall cherry'). Genyu Sokyu, priest at a Zen temple in Miharu and Akutagawa literary prizewinner was there sitting out in the cold. But the tree wasn't in flower. It's a venerable old tree and wonderful in any season but it's a pity it didn't bloom to order.
Had some interesting comments from Diogenes (thank you!). Check them out at the end of previous post Food 1. In addition to the serious points, lots of interesting trivia. Did you know that all lead exposed to the air since Hiroshima is radioactive and there's a market for pre-WWII lead from sunken ships and old buildings to use in measuring equipment? And here's another. A 70 kg human being contains 8,100 bq of natural radioisotopes. That works out at 116 bq/kg - over the new levels of 100 bq/kg - making people too radioactive to eat! And finally, calculations to show that the odd high radioactive food doesn't matter that much. It's the cumulative average that's important. So maybe I'll break my fast. Actually I have to admit to having succumbed recently to the local strawberries.
Had some interesting comments from Diogenes (thank you!). Check them out at the end of previous post Food 1. In addition to the serious points, lots of interesting trivia. Did you know that all lead exposed to the air since Hiroshima is radioactive and there's a market for pre-WWII lead from sunken ships and old buildings to use in measuring equipment? And here's another. A 70 kg human being contains 8,100 bq of natural radioisotopes. That works out at 116 bq/kg - over the new levels of 100 bq/kg - making people too radioactive to eat! And finally, calculations to show that the odd high radioactive food doesn't matter that much. It's the cumulative average that's important. So maybe I'll break my fast. Actually I have to admit to having succumbed recently to the local strawberries.
If I'm really worried I could always pop into a new clinic that's sprung up on the main street （駅前通り）calling itself The Radioactive Premium Dock Centre. It offers whole body counter testing and thyroid testing. It looks very modern and the boards in the window which sport flags from Belarus and stress international connections give the impression of an international semi-official organisation but a search on the internet identified it as an IT company called The Japan Third Party Company, listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. I suppose it was inevitable that enterprising businesses should capitalise on people's anxieties and maybe there is a demand. They opened a clinic in Tokyo in January, one in Sendai in March and now one here in Koriyama and another in Iwaki. Normal price 12,600 yen but special price for Fukushima of 5,250 yen for adults and 3,500 yen for children under 15. I certainly wouldn't pay the full price. Will I be tempted to have a go? Last summer I would have said yes. But now I'm feeling better informed and a lot calmer. Probably not, is the answer.
Did you hear about the football and volleyball washed up in Alaska? Owners (a teenage boy and girl) who lost everything in the tsunami are delighted to get them back.
Cold and rainy today but better weather forecast from tomorrow. The start of the cherry blossom season at long last?
Bye for now
Anne
Did you hear about the football and volleyball washed up in Alaska? Owners (a teenage boy and girl) who lost everything in the tsunami are delighted to get them back.
Cold and rainy today but better weather forecast from tomorrow. The start of the cherry blossom season at long last?
Bye for now
Anne
Man made radionuclides and natural background radiation are not the same.
ReplyDeleteDo never give this impression a chance Mr. Kaneko. Never.
In the name of the Children.
Maybe parents read here, so let's start some information, right? This is not panic making, this is important knowledge from Belarus. You know the country's situation.
1986. The Academy of Sciences in Moscow has decided it is acceptable for people to get 35 rem (350 mSv/year) lifetime dose from the Chernobyl accident. This means that if people living in an area with 1 million becquerels per square meter they get their reasonable dose in 35 years. In a 10 million becquerels per square meter area in less than 4 years. Radioactivity. Each additional radioactivity which we are exposed to harms our bodies. The natural radioactivity with which we are surrounded. Life arose in a radiation environment.
Radiation is not life-friendly. It is a hostile factor. Life has prevailed against this hostile factor. The natural radiation. The beta radiation of strontium has a range of 1 millimeter. No matter where it is installed, it reaches the stem cells with its beta radiation. From the stem cells, everything is made. So the stem cells are bombarded constantly. What are the symptoms? We received the following reports by the children of Chernobyl: Chernobyl AIDS. Symptoms of anemia with decreased number of red blood cells. A therapy resitant anemia.
Vitamins and iron will not help. The ongoing hemorrhage, the bleeding e.g. from the nose. Decreased number of platelets, which are indeed involved in blood clotting. The immune system of children. They are always sick, every little infection "throws them around". They constantly have colds, infections. And low white blood cells in the blood. This is easily explained: With a Bone marrow suppression: The bone marrow - due to the constant bombardment - and especially because of the accumulation of strontium - lost the ability to compensate.
Radioactivity means selective delivery of energy. On the molecules in our body. They are tiny pinholes in the shortest possible time. But with full force. We are constantly exposed to such radiation damage each second. Every second. Permanenent.And life could not exist and the information of Life could not be passed on, if we have not developed effective repair mechanisms. But the repair mechanisms are very complex and it takes time. The shorter the life cycle of a cell, the less time remains for the repair. This explains why children with rapidly growing tissue, with rapidly dividing cells - are particularly sensitive to radiation. Mitosis.
Irradiated areas and relatively “CLEAN” areas. Children have Cesium in their bodies, no matter if they live in “clean” or irradiated areas. This is one important fact these maps show. Why is that? Nesterenko, founder of BELRAD: “Children receive the highest doses, because the dose coefficients, in a 3 year old child, are 5 times higher than in adults.“
Clean city, irradiated food.
Cesium 137 mimics potassium and it did not exist before the atomic age. “cesium is easy to accumulate in the heart” / “50 Becquerel break your heart rhythm at 20 to 30 becquerel per kilogram of body weight” (CHILDREN!) / “if, during pregnancy, there is more than 200 becquerel per kilogram of cesium in the placenta it can lead to sudden death of the child” – according to Prof. Bandazhevsky from Belarus, now working in Ukraine and Japan.
ReplyDeleteIt’s health / death consequences are usually ignored by IAEA, WHO, UNSCEAR, ICRP, BEIR, health ministeries and authorities, such as FDA. They even allow a certain (murderous) limit for food.
100 Becquerel are potential deadly for Children. And, in the long time, because it's man made radionuclides, also for adults. In Belarus there are nearly NO healthy Children anymore. Most of them have 0 - 20 Bq/Kg or 20 - 100 Bq/Kg of Cesium 137 in their body.
The full decay time of Cesium 137 is 301 years: http://life-upgrade.com/DATA/Primary%20Radionuclides.gif
Latency for Children: 1 - 4 years
Adults: 20 - 25 years.
“In most cases effect of existing concentrations of radioactive caesium in the organism (10 – 20 Bq/kg) doesn’t cause its death, but influencing the energetic apparatus of cardiac cells significantly reduces their adaptable possibilities, and as a result functioning during stress situations and banal loads (physical and mental tension, hypoxia, disorder of temperature regime, alcohol drinking, infections and allergic diseases) becoming impossible.” http://chernobyl-today.org/images/stories/Bandajevski_2001_Radiocaesium_and_heart.pdf
“we can rightly consider the Cesium-137 in relatively small doses (20-30 Bq/kg); a breach of the regulatory processes in the body”: PAGE 2 – 3: http://chernobyl-today.org/images/stories/BANDAJEVSKI_UNSCEAR_-_REUTERS_Sept_22nd_2010_Eng_V2.pdf
Here two articles. which explain how survival is in dangers. By radiation AND by authorities and Experts:
http://tekknorg.wordpress.com/2012/04/14/children-radiation-maps-2/
専門家 ユーリー・バンダジェフスキー 日本 Belarusian Chernobyl and Children expert Yury Bandazhevsky in JAPAN http://tekknorg.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/%E5%B0%82%E9%96%80%E5%AE%B6-%E3%83%A6%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC%E3%83%BB%E3%83%90%E3%83%B3%E3%83%80%E3%82%B8%E3%82%A7%E3%83%95%E3%82%B9%E3%82%AD%E3%83%BC-%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC-belarusian-chernobyl-and-c/
In 1970 it was proven that human fetus is 500 times more vulnerable to radiation. And in 1978 this was released in the bulletin of atomic scientists: http://books.google.de/books?id=aAoAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=cancer+stewart+xray+1970+radiographs&source=bl&ots=UGZYt0TZGo&sig=ENE9wYZjjNs3Rh2XyptdZwP3Ucw&hl=de&ei=7545Tu6iF8aAOsLrvbMG&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
ICRP has confirmed in 1966 that natural radiation is harmful! ICRP Publication Number 8 from 1966 on page 60. in relation to the health damage caused by natural radiation for the bulk of the world’s population is a risk of sixth order (1 to 10 dead per million per rad / gray) in a few areas with high natural background radiation the risk fifth order. 10 to 100 dead per million and rad (gray). and in 1977 the ICRP publication number 26 said, that, in this sense, regional differences of the natural radiation are so regarded, that the corresponding differences include the damage. and in the ’80s the natural radiation was simply doubled. and in 2011 it became the twentyfold in japan: 20 mSv/a. Natural radiation is used as an excuse to increase artificial radiation with radionuclide-antagonists.
They call that radiation-protection!
1971: the discoverer of plutonium and president of the USAEC Glenn Theodore Seaborg resigns – at the same time the ICRP reduced the additional maximum dose near reactors for the public from 500 mrem/annual (5 mSv/a) to 5 mrem/annual (0,05 mSv/a).
ReplyDeletethe USAEC “protects” health and advertises nuclear industry at the same time, later renamed in AEC, then renamed in NRC.
Source NRC (USAEC / AEC before): http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/32111590/seaborg-resigns-from-aec
Source (ICRP 5 mSv/a): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2596042/pdf/yjbm00117-0064.pdf
! no coincidence !
Thanks to Prof. Ernest Sternglass and his studies about infant mortality near reactors;: http://www.ratical.org/radiation/inetSeries/ejs1192.html
And, in 1991, the ICRP lowered the standard from 5 mSv /a to 1 mSv/a: “For occupational exposure in planned exposure situations the Commission now recommends an equivalent dose limit for the lens of the eye of 20 mSv in a year, averaged over defined periods of 5 years, with no single year exceeding 50 mSv.” page 1: Source: http://www.icrp.org/docs/ICRP%20Statement%20on%20Tissue%20Reactions.pdf
And in 2011, the japanese government increased it for infants, students, mature, unborn, to: 20 mSv/a
A 2000 PERCENT INCREASE.
Source: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/japanese-ire-over-radiation-limit-for-kids/story-e6frf7jx-1226061484710
20 mSv mean: below, but still high: 555,000 becquerel per m² contamination (from 1995 Belarus National Report):
http://tekknorg.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/162.jpg
17 milli Sievert per year mean: 16,000 – 32,000 additional cancer deaths AND 150,000 – 1,5 million deaths by genetic diseases: http://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/PP/app1.html by John W. Gofman, Ph.D., M.D and Arthur R. Tamplin, Ph.D. quote “If we use the most optimistic Russell mouse genetic data, and even if we give full credit for slow delivery of radiation, we reach the conclusion that 100,000 extra genetic deaths per year would occur for the allowable average exposure of 170 millirads to the population. This can hardly be construed as an “optimistic” outlook, or a “safe” dose of radiation.”
http://tekknorg.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/effect-of-cesium-and-strontium-on-japanese-children-japanese-officals-irresponsible/
“…To provide an adequate safety standard the dose limit of 1 mSv/y have to be reduced to 0.02 mSv/y or 20 µSv/y.”Page 9: http://www.staff.uni-marburg.de/~kunih/all-doc/stoakuni.pdf by Dr. Horst Kuni, Nuclear Medicine, University Professor.
ReplyDeleteProfessor Yuri Bandazhevsky, a pathologist, Rector of the Medical Institute of Gomel, on the ingestion of radio caesium includes – he said: “Clinical checks on children between 1996 and 1999 show that at levels greater than 50Bq/kg there are pathological changes in vital organs and systems – cardiovascular, nervous, endocrine, immune, reproductive, digestive excretory and eyes. Caesium concentrations in the placenta reveal a relationship with nervous system defects in the foetus. The health condition of the population is a disaster but being a physician myself I cannot accept it as hopeless. With all my faith in God and life I appeal to anyone who can influence it: do your best to improve the situation. There is nothing more precious on this planet than life. And we should do everything possible to protect it.” http://www.spokesmanbooks.com/Spokesman/PDF/91Gifford.pdf
Until 1990 ICRP said it is not necessary to evacuate people, as long as the radiation does not exceed 500 mSv.: http://books.google.de/books?id=Ber3ENERfGwC&pg=PA343&lpg=PA343&dq=ICRP+40++500mSv&source=bl&ots=IaOqT2MqK2&sig=l3l0MYGe_nKkaXxvFZxkkG8hP5M&hl=de&ei=gc81TpqyI4PfsgajxLG5Ag&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CE0Q6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=ot%20exceed%20500%20mSv.%20The%20ICRP&f=false
WARNING TO ALL PREGNANT WOMEN: http://tekknorg.wordpress.com/2011/08/03/safe-radiation-levels-never-get-your-facts-here/
IAEA subsequently took its radiation protection recommendations directly from ICRP (rather than WHO), therefore persons from the Commission who also sit on UNSCEAR both make the rules and judge their adequacy: http://www.ratical.org/radiation/Chernobyl/CaUFtH.html
With kind regards,
Jan Hemmer
Foundation "for the Children of Chernobyl" Belarus-Germany
Some have gone further than salvaging low-radiation lead from WW2 ships. Scientists have salvaged Roman-age lead ingots to shield their ultra-sensitive neutrino detector.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Nature, "This is where the shipwrecked lead comes into the picture. Lead is, in principle, a shield against radiation, but freshly mined lead is itself slightly radioactive because it contains an unstable isotope, lead-210."
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100415/full/news.2010.186.html
Sorry to be a bit late returning to this. Um, did I mention there were a lot of people out there trying to scare you? :)
ReplyDeleteFortunately, other people from reputable, unbiased institutions have already gone to the trouble of wading through 140 or so references and generating a summary of the data (or lack of it), so you don't need to read them all. I recommend two survey articles in the peer-reviewed journal Epidemiologic Reviews, published by Oxford University Press and edited by the Johns Hopkins University school of public health, a well-regarded US academic institution. Full versions of both papers are available free online.
The earlier one is more useful. It's title is "Chernobyl, Ten Years After: Health Consequences":
http://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/2/187.full.pdf
The article cite the well understood increase in thyroid cancer, but also offers the following caution in the conclusions (page 14 of the download, page 200 of the journal):
"Different articles have reported increases in various physical disorders. These claims originate from ecologic studies, so that no causal link can be established
with the accident. These claims often appear in nonscientific reports and their basis in fact cannot be ascertained...In addition, some of these pathologies have
not been previously related to ionizing radiation (changes in female reproductive functions and neonatal health, vegetative dystonia, endocrine and respiratory
effects), or only at doses much higher than those resulting from the accident (immunologic, cardiovascular, neurologic, and digestive effects, lens changes)."
This is polite academic-journal-speak, but the gist is that the claims in the posts above are unwarranted. The scientific evidence linking the observed symptoms to the Chernobyl fallout is not significant for anything but thyroid cancer and leukemia, and the absolute (not relative) risk was low for both of those. The worst-case absolute risk for thyroid cancer in Belarus was on the order of 1 chance in 9000 annually, peaking about 15 years after the accident. For perspective, this is about the same as the risk of dying in an auto accident in the US in 2009 (34,000 fatalities in a population of 307 million).
The same journal published a similar review at 20 years:
http://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/27/1/56.full.pdf+html
There is no mention of the sorts of symptoms in the posts above, such as mysterious anemias.
The absolute risk of leukemia in one study of 168,000 "liquidators" (clean-up workers) was 48 cases, of which perhaps half might be attributed to the accident, up to 1993 (typical latency of radiation-induced leukemia is 2-5 years after exposure), or roughly 1 case per 7000 people.
If you read both reports, you will see a consistent reference to the idea that the fear/anxiety itself has significant negative health consequences -- which is why I spend so much time trying to provide information so people can keep radiation fears in proper perspective.
I was wondering how to reply to the person from Belarus. Thank your calm and lucid comments.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry this is late getting published. For some reason your comments end up in my spam box.
Thank you again.