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The effects of Chernobyl are not limited to the exclusion zone. In the 100km radius zone, my family had to test all our food with a Geiger counter because anyth

The effects of Chernobyl are not limited to the exclusion zone. In the 100km radius zone, my family had to test all our food with a Geiger counter because anything grown in the area was poisoned. (The government made Geiger counters illegal to own, btw.)

godelski 5y ago
Did any of your food ever have dangerous levels of radiation?
- forgotmypw17 5y ago
  Yes, that is why we were testing it.
  - godelski 5y ago
    If you're talking about boars and mushrooms, then I'm guessing not. You'd have to eat an absurd amount of meat and mushrooms every day to accumulate enough dose to go over your yearly limits, and you still wouldn't get anywhere near radiation worker limits. We're talking at least a hamburger every single day in the worst case scenario, and let's be real, that much red meat is going to cause other serious health problems.
- dividedbyzero 5y ago
  There are still lots of boars in southern Germany that are far above the official threshold for consumption (which is quite high already), like, almost glow-in-the-dark. Southern Germany is a long way from Chernobyl, but a substantial amount of the fallout rained down here. Pretty much nothing grown in the areas that got contaminated precipitation was safe to eat, sometimes for years. Milk was way too contaminated even after dilution with milk from other areas, and pretty high amounts of radionuclides accumulated in the bottom layers of sandboxes on playgrounds and other unexpected places. No one knew at first though, the West German government kept playing down the incident even though they knew that fallout reaching Germany was a big possibility, and thus lots and lots of people got rained on who could have protected themselves (my mom for one, on the way to work, metallic taste and all) That's a pretty important part of the anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany, by the way. That's why a lot of people simply won't trust the parties involved in running nuclear power plants to do so safely – because the system failed already in an incident that wasn't even a domestic one, and also because of the rampant corruption surrounding those plants and high-level politics in general.
  - godelski 5y ago
    Last time I ran through the numbers I was remembering that you'd have to eat a ridiculous amount of wild boar and/or wild mushrooms (assuming all were irradiated) on a daily basis to even approach dangerous levels.[0] These stories make the rounds and constantly sound dangerous but the fact is that people just don't understand nuclear physics. I mean why would they? Everyone isn't taking college level physics classes, let alone ones on medical physics. If I wrote an article about how radiation levels in tuna doubled after the Fukushima disaster then people would stop eating tuna. This literally happened even though that doubling was to 5Bq/kg and Japanese limits are 100Bq/kg (US is 1.2kBq/kg). The fact is that our instruments for detecting radiation are extremely sensitive. You can measure radiation in everything. Yeah, the tuna got more radioactive after Fukushima, but that doesn't mean they got more dangerous. That's not how it works. And I'm tired of people that know absolutely nothing about nuclear physics talking as if they are experts on radiation. Both people in the pro and anti-nuclear camps do this and neither are helping. [0] Cs137 has a dose factor of 0.014mSv/kBq and the high radiation had 600Bq/kg. So that's 0.0084mSv/kg of boar. European rose limit is 20mSv/yr, so that's 6.5kg of boar a day. And we need to note that 20mSv is well within the safety limit. 1 Sv is a 5.5% chance increase of cancer within your lifetime (LNT model which over estimates), so that's 6.5kg (14.3lbs) of boar a day to raise your lifetime risk of cancer by 1% (body shows to actually deal with these low levels of radiation fine). Edit: If you're eating 14lbs of wild meat every single day, you probably have larger health issue than a 5% increased risk of cancer in your lifetime (the meat is probably giving you a higher chance of cancer).
    - forgotmypw17 5y ago
      I think it is really arrogant to assume that you know what the dangerous levels are, and to claim that under a certain level is not dangerous or harmful. Time and time again, this type of thinking has been proven naive at best, and often criminally misleading: synthetic food additives, tobacco, opiate painkillers, radiation, leaded gasoline, and many, many more. When it comes to the health of myself and those close to me, I'm going to err on the side of caution, and disregard what the "official numbers" say.
joelbluminator 5y ago
I think I need a Geiger counter for my wife's cooking...

godelski 5y ago

Did any of your food ever have dangerous levels of radiation?

forgotmypw17 5y ago
Yes, that is why we were testing it.
- godelski 5y ago
  If you're talking about boars and mushrooms, then I'm guessing not. You'd have to eat an absurd amount of meat and mushrooms every day to accumulate enough dose to go over your yearly limits, and you still wouldn't get anywhere near radiation worker limits. We're talking at least a hamburger every single day in the worst case scenario, and let's be real, that much red meat is going to cause other serious health problems.
dividedbyzero 5y ago
There are still lots of boars in southern Germany that are far above the official threshold for consumption (which is quite high already), like, almost glow-in-the-dark. Southern Germany is a long way from Chernobyl, but a substantial amount of the fallout rained down here. Pretty much nothing grown in the areas that got contaminated precipitation was safe to eat, sometimes for years. Milk was way too contaminated even after dilution with milk from other areas, and pretty high amounts of radionuclides accumulated in the bottom layers of sandboxes on playgrounds and other unexpected places. No one knew at first though, the West German government kept playing down the incident even though they knew that fallout reaching Germany was a big possibility, and thus lots and lots of people got rained on who could have protected themselves (my mom for one, on the way to work, metallic taste and all) That's a pretty important part of the anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany, by the way. That's why a lot of people simply won't trust the parties involved in running nuclear power plants to do so safely – because the system failed already in an incident that wasn't even a domestic one, and also because of the rampant corruption surrounding those plants and high-level politics in general.
- godelski 5y ago
  Last time I ran through the numbers I was remembering that you'd have to eat a ridiculous amount of wild boar and/or wild mushrooms (assuming all were irradiated) on a daily basis to even approach dangerous levels.[0] These stories make the rounds and constantly sound dangerous but the fact is that people just don't understand nuclear physics. I mean why would they? Everyone isn't taking college level physics classes, let alone ones on medical physics. If I wrote an article about how radiation levels in tuna doubled after the Fukushima disaster then people would stop eating tuna. This literally happened even though that doubling was to 5Bq/kg and Japanese limits are 100Bq/kg (US is 1.2kBq/kg). The fact is that our instruments for detecting radiation are extremely sensitive. You can measure radiation in everything. Yeah, the tuna got more radioactive after Fukushima, but that doesn't mean they got more dangerous. That's not how it works. And I'm tired of people that know absolutely nothing about nuclear physics talking as if they are experts on radiation. Both people in the pro and anti-nuclear camps do this and neither are helping. [0] Cs137 has a dose factor of 0.014mSv/kBq and the high radiation had 600Bq/kg. So that's 0.0084mSv/kg of boar. European rose limit is 20mSv/yr, so that's 6.5kg of boar a day. And we need to note that 20mSv is well within the safety limit. 1 Sv is a 5.5% chance increase of cancer within your lifetime (LNT model which over estimates), so that's 6.5kg (14.3lbs) of boar a day to raise your lifetime risk of cancer by 1% (body shows to actually deal with these low levels of radiation fine). Edit: If you're eating 14lbs of wild meat every single day, you probably have larger health issue than a 5% increased risk of cancer in your lifetime (the meat is probably giving you a higher chance of cancer).
  - forgotmypw17 5y ago
    I think it is really arrogant to assume that you know what the dangerous levels are, and to claim that under a certain level is not dangerous or harmful. Time and time again, this type of thinking has been proven naive at best, and often criminally misleading: synthetic food additives, tobacco, opiate painkillers, radiation, leaded gasoline, and many, many more. When it comes to the health of myself and those close to me, I'm going to err on the side of caution, and disregard what the "official numbers" say.

joelbluminator 5y ago

I think I need a Geiger counter for my wife's cooking...