9 ms·

Just want to point out that low level radiation is probably good for you. It's cool that they found it, but this is not any kind of health danger. Low level ra

• bob_theslob646 8y ago
  >Fukushima is aweful for the nearby region and still a cautionary tale. But it didn't poison the whole world. I would be careful with that last statement because seafood from Japan is global. Only time will tell the true impact of Fukushima's radioactive water. "More than 1 million tons of radiation-laced water is already being kept on-site in an ever-expanding forest of hundreds of hulking steel tanks—and so far, there’s no plan to deal with them."[1] 12 US gallons = 100 lbs and 1 million tons is equal to 2.4 million gallons https://www.wired.com/story/fukushimas-other-big-problem-a-million-tons-of-radioactive-water/ https://www.wired.com/story/fukushimas-other-big-problem-a-m...
  • greenshackle2 8y ago
    For perspective, that's 4 olympic swimming pools worth of water. It's not a small amount but it's not enormous as far as volumes of liquid goes.
    • anonymouz 8y ago
      A typical olympic pool (assumed 50m x 25m x 2m; the depth actually isn't standarized), contains 2500m^3 of water. 1m^3 of water has a mass of 1t (in typical conditions). So 10^6 tons of water corresponds to 400 olympic swimming pools. That's quite a lot of water (still not much compared to the volume of the oceans, of course).
      • greenshackle2 8y ago
        You're right, I was going off the parent. They made an error somewhere, 1 million tons is 240 million gallons, not 2.4 millions.
  • newnewpdro 8y ago
    It's worse than that; > 100 tons of groundwater contaminated by the ongoing crisis still run to the ocean daily. [1] They've made progress in reducing the amount (it used to be hundreds of tons daily) but it's still a problem. Now there's talk of dumping what's been stored into the ocean anyways. [1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/remediating-fukushima-when-everything-goes-to-hell-you-go-back-to-basics/2/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/remediating-fukushim...
    • antris 8y ago
      > They've made progress in reducing the amount (it used to be hundreds of tons daily) but it's still a problem What exactly is the problem that it is causing?
      • newnewpdro 8y ago
        Are you asking me what is the problem with 100+ tons of reactor-contaminated groundwater effluent entering the sea on a daily basis? On the surface this seems like a weak attempt at a strawman, please clarify. edit: s/irradiated/reactor-contaminated/
        • antris 8y ago
          Yes, I'm asking that. Because all sea water is irradiated anyway, the effects depend on the amount of radiation in the water. So, what problems is this water entering the sea causing?
          • newnewpdro 8y ago
            My understanding is not all isotopes are equally hazardous. The stuff coming with the reactor-contaminated water is particularly harmful to the marine environment and people of Japan, and not normally present at such levels in the surrounding waters. The half-life as I understand it is relatively short for the especially harmful stuff, but that's not so helpful if leaks are ongoing.
        • 8y ago
  • exrook 8y ago
    Just a correction on this, 1 million tons is equal to around 240 million gallons [0], which is roughly the volume of 362 olympic sized swimming pools[1]. [0] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+million+tons+of+water+to+gallons http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+million+tons+of+water... [1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(1+million+tons+of+water+to+gallons)%2F(volume+of+olympic+swimming+pool) http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(1+million+tons+of+wate...
  • DennisP 8y ago
    "Tons of radioactive water" is a silly measurement. The water itself isn't radioactive, it has radioactive material mixed in with it. If you quadrupled the amount of water, you would have 4 million tons of radioactive water but it'd be the same amount of radioactivity, just more diluted.
    • squirrelicus 8y ago
      It's even sillier because "radioactive water" isn't a measurement of the amount of radiation or a description of the decay process that reduces the danger over time
• kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
  Radiation from high altitude is a concern for frequent fliers and air crews.
  • deelowe 8y ago
    There may be a concern, but so far, there's been no evidence to support there is any safety risk.
    • mikeash 8y ago
      There is a noticeably higher risk of cataracts, at least. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/16087845/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/16087845/
      • deelowe 8y ago
        Interesting. Didn't know that.
  • joshe 8y ago
    It should not be, "Cockpit crew had a low all-cause, all-cancer, and cardiovascular disease mortality but elevated aircraft accident mortality." [1] In plainer, much less careful English: even with that exposure, they live longer than average. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4511278/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4511278/
    • walrus01 8y ago
      You could consider this an artificially selected population, since to keep an airline transport pilot license it is required to maintain a current FAA medical. I'm sure lots of pilots smoke, drink and eat poorly, but they try to avoid getting grounded and career-ended by their physician.
  • nrau 8y ago
    There was a good study and results that just came out about this in the past couple of weeks and it backs up that airline crew have higher cancer rates: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/well/airline-crew-have-higher-cancer-rates.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/well/airline-crew-have-hi...
• rsync 8y ago
  "Low level radiation probably acts as a beneficial stressor, like exercise or fasting ..." I have proposed that the common flu that we all get every 12-18 months serves the same purpose and that attempts to avoid this (via the influenza vaccine) could have unintended consequences for the long term health of our immune system ... but I have never been met with anything but incredulity ...
  • vkou 8y ago
    This would be a great theory, if influensa didn't kill ~50,000 Americans every year. Mostly the elderly and the immuno-compromised. If it weren't for vaccinations, and the associated herd immunity, many more people would be dying to it.
  • HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
    I knew someone who felt exactly the same way, so don't despair :-) I'm not quite so extreme, but I do avoid flu shots about one out of every three years for the same reason. In any case, I don't get the flu very often.
  • outworlder 8y ago
    What? A vaccine is nothing if an outside stressor on the immune system! It is designed to provoke the exact immune system response the real virus would, so it can react more quickly to future infections. Unless you mean that the upper respiratory tract inflammation itself is what would cause the beneficial effect?
    • rsync 8y ago
      Yes, that's the common refrain - that the vaccine itself serves as that same stressor - and of course that is true, on the date that you take the vaccine. But from then on, while you certainly maintain information from the vaccine in your immune system, you aren't ramping up the actual mechanisms of your immune system like you do when you actually experience influenza. Think of the temperature raise, the white blood cell production, possible gastro-intestinal reactions - these are all bodily systems being ramped up to a level of performance they don't typically see. My thought is that if I "successfully" avoid the flu for, say, the next 40 years, those bodily systems will not be as robust - even if I maintain the informational content of the vaccine itself. Please, please, do not confuse this or lump this in with kooky anti-science, vaccine opponents. I'm just thinking out loud about how stressors on body systems work - which is what my parent was discussing.
• joshe 8y ago
  Here's a very straightforward study, "Evidence That Lifelong Low Dose Rates of Ionizing Radiation Increase Lifespan in Long- and Short-Lived Dogs" [1]. Two studies on beagles: "One exposed the dogs to whole-body cobalt-60 γ-radiation." "The other evaluated dogs whose lungs were exposed to α-particle radiation from plutonium." For both studies, excess radiation improved their lifespans by 20-50 percent. It is a substantial beneficial effect. Above a beneficial level of radiation their lifespans shortened to the level of dogs who were not exposed at all and then to substantial reductions in lifespans. This graph illustrates it best: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5347275/figure/fig4-1559325817692903/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5347275/figure/... We don't know why low radiation exposure is good, but it does seem to be. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5347275/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5347275/
  • fhood 8y ago
    The lack of public trust in science is a real problem, and mostly unjustified or misdirected. That said, nothing reinforces the evil scientist image like irradiating puppies.
    • joshe 8y ago
      It is pretty dark. There's even a cute beagle picture in a graph. Apparently beagles are the preferred model animal for radiation studies going back to the 1950's.
      • fhood 8y ago
        I don't even have a problem with it necessarily, but they should probably use pigs. Nobody cares about pigs.
        • drag0nballz 8y ago
          Pigs are actually great pets. They've been domesticated practically as long as dogs
• justatdotin 8y ago
  > low level radiation is probably good for you colour me unconvinced. sure, hormesis is a theory worth considering, but so is Petkau. There are good reasons that international standards retain LNT on review.
  • Pica_soO 8y ago
    It sort of reek unsound doesent it? Like CRISPR-CAS in moderation is possibly good for you. Remember that one time where the that massage felt like being kicked by a boxer in the back? The assumption for low-radiation beeing healthy goes like this: We are creatures of a naturally radioactive environment. Actually the environment was much more radioactive in the ancient past - which is why we search living and deceased fossils for DNA-Repair mechanisms, as these creatures would have to be much more cancer resistant back then. But i digress... DNA-Digression, that is what radiation inflicts - also known as damage. Now this is super obvious damage kicking alive the repair mechanism, which also fixes alot of other - not so obvious damages or kills the cell.
• w00kie 8y ago
  You can buy radium balls to put in your bath on amazon japan: https://amzn.to/2JDwICi https://amzn.to/2JDwICi
• rflrob 8y ago
  I agree that the level found in the wine is inconsequential, but it's worth pointing out that studies of radiation workers have found that the linear no threshold model does a pretty reasonable job of explaining non-leukemia cancer risk, at least around the levels of radiation equivalent to, say, a multi-decade career as a flight attendant. Granted, the error bars are pretty big, and you have to get to levels equivalent to a trip to Mars for it to get appreciably above background. TLDR: It's overenthusiastic to think the literature has concluded that low-level radiation is probably good for you, but good experiments are hard. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2634664/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2634664/ Dose examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert#Dose_examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert#Dose_examples