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Nice you reveal your bias. Measurable radioactive dose is easy to measure, so of course it is what you would like us to pay attention to. But radionuclides inv
by ncmncm 4y ago
Nice you reveal your bias.
Measurable radioactive dose is easy to measure, so of course it is what you would like us to pay attention to. But radionuclides invading tissue is what causes cancers. Those risks are harder to measure. Which radionuclides? What grain size? A nanogram of the wrong stuff in the wrong place is all it takes.
- acidburnNSA 4y agoDo to know how many nanograms of radioactive natural Potassium-40 and natural radon are in your body right now? For potassium 40 it's about 10,000,000 nanograms. It is a strong beta and gamma emitter. It has been in all creatures that have ever lived. It's difficult to postulate that levels 7 orders of magnitude less than that are major threats.
- ncmncm 4y agoDetails seem to matter.
- ben_w 4y agoHalf life is 1.25 billion years and rate is the inverse of lifetime, so I don't understand why you classify potassium-40 as a "strong" emitter? Radon-222 has a half life of 3.8 days, so that at least is a strong emitter. Less of it in the environment, but IIRC still the biggest source of background radiation for us.
- ncmncm 4y agoYeah, radon doesn't concentrate. People get cancer when a microscopic grain of Pu lodges in an alveola and just blasts and blasts that one spot for years.
- defrost 4y agoRadon may not concentrate within the body but it does concentrate within unventilated basements and within valleys in granite heavy areas. It blows away and expresses fresh from the ground on a daily basis such that prolonged exposure is equivilant to a two|three pack a day smoking habit wrt cancer risk.
- ncmncm 4y agoRadon is much heavier than air (7.5x), so pools in basements. You should be able to keep it cleared out with the gaseous equivalent of a sump pump.
- defrost 4y agoYep, that's what happens - it pools. Modern standards in many G20 countries require new (and rennovating) houses in radon prone areas to provide appropriate ventilation. Geographically in also pools in still valleys, often during the night and morning with radon 'clouds' clearing from the floor by afternoon (as can be seen when processing airborne radiometric survey data and applying radon removal filtering to normalise U-Y-Th maps).