Ah, good point. I was thinking more along these lines: the purpose of talking about "banana equivalent doses" is to make otherwise meaningless numbers easier t

Ah, good point. I was thinking more along these lines: the purpose of talking about "banana equivalent doses" is to make otherwise meaningless numbers easier to understand by relating them to everyday experience. The comment by m0th87 doesn't really do that. "40000000000000000 kilograms of bananas" is just as difficult to comprehend as "140000000 curies". So to relate serious radiation back to bananas, let's say that Chernobyl released as much radiation as worldwide banana production[1] for the next 55,000 years. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bannana#Trade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bannana#Trade