Radioactive Concrete From Fukushima Found In New Construction 237
mdsolar writes "The Japanese government is investigating how radioactive concrete ended up in a new apartment complex in the Fukushima Prefecture, housing evacuees from a town near the crippled nuclear plant. The contamination was first discovered when dosimeter readings of children in the city of Nihonmatsu, roughly 40 miles from the reactors at Fuksuhima Dai-ichi, revealed a high school student had been exposed to 1.62 millisieverts in a span of three months, well above the annual 1 millisievert limit the government has established for safety reasons."
Re:A bit of perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a good friend who married a Japanese girl 2 years ago and moved there. I mentioned to someone that I was planning to visit him and her first reaction was, "Aren't you afraid that you'll die from radiation poisoning?".
The fear of radiation poisoning seems to me to be an infantile reaction similar to fear of the dark(nyctophobia). It's a fear of something that we can't see, and can't quantify with our own senses. Why be mindlessly afraid of radiation when it can be measured and the risks are understood? I'm not particularly afraid of travelling to Tokyo when Fukushima is hundreds of kilometers away and virtually unaffected?
Re:A bit of perspective (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe she was concerned about the extra radiation dose that you would receive from flying in an airplane at high altitudes.
Re:A bit of perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
Wlet's not forget how much radiation this actually is. It's roughly the equivalent of one chest CT scan per year.
Sure about that? They're getting 1/3 of a mSv per month, so about 4 per year. one chest CT scan is about two dozen or so as a rough rule of thumb. Closer to a CT scan per six years. Since most kids go to primary school about a dozen years, its about the equivalent of two chest CT scans. Not one per year, not two per year, but two. two total. Hmm I went thru two pneumonia x-rays in the last almost 40 years, although those were not CT scans, at any rate the kids are getting about three times the dosage that a middle age non smoker like me is going thru. Not too serious.
Theoretically the girls are getting mammograms every, like, year or something, and each is about 2 mSv, so you do the math. For genetic risk factors my wife gets the girls squashed and zapped every year or so, which is ... 2 mSv per year, so apparently from a radiation dose standpoint its about twice as dangerous as ... being a girl. Not too serious. Well I mean cancer sucks, but I mean the situation of the kids is not much more dangerous for the girls than being tested for cancer.
Also you get "about" 3 or so mSv per year naturally, from eating bananas, cosmic rays, granite countertops, stuff like that, which is pretty much how the scientists pulled the 1 mSv figure out of some orifice, that an extra 33% probably can't hurt anything? I know the radiation dosage in colorado is much higher than sealevel and the Fukushima kids live at sea level, so you can also describe their increase dosage as a height above sea level. I'm guessing their increased dosage is about the same as moving to Denver. Again, not too serious, although I would not want to live in Denver.
Note this average normal does assumes you don't smoke... the polonium in tobacco means one cancer stick per day equals about one mSv per year, so the 4 mSv increase is equivalent to smoking about four cigs per day, roughly, which is probably about as bad as the second hand smoke from living with a smoking parent. Again, not too serious.
Radiation is fun to learn about because its "secret". Even on /. where people know volts and mV and amps and mA, very few know mSv and rads and rems and such and its pretty easy to learn, and fairly easy to memorize rough comparisons, like a cancer stick per day is a mSv per year, or a CT scan is about two dozen mSv, or a natural dose from mother earth is about a mSv per season depending on your altitude, etc etc.
That is a non story. (Score:4, Interesting)
Big Fucking Deal. Here around due to the granitic rock and radon , we are getting in average a bit less than 5 mSv per year. For Japan it is about 1mSv. Assuming that radiation dose per 3 month is in addition to the normal natural dose, they are geeting per year about the same as we got in our house : around 5 mSv per year. And the world average is around 2.5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation [wikipedia.org]. Anything under 10 mSv per year I would not even bat an eye.