4 ms·

It's not scaremongering when radioactive material finds it way into the human body through breathing and eating.

by bitcartel 14y ago

jlgreco 14y ago
Of course it is, if you use "radioactive" as a binary label without specifying the particular parameters.
- bitcartel 14y ago
  The residents don't have the luxury of conducting scientific experiments, they are the experiment, and the results speak for themselves. Miscarriages, birth defects, leukemia, early deaths. Pretty binary to me.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    Not in the slightest. Those things could very likely be caused, at least in part, by toxicity not radioactivity. For example, deleted uranium has been seen to cause very similar issues, but nearly all of the issues associated with depleted uranium come from the fact that it is a heavy metal, not terribly unlike mercury. Issues caused by the radioactivity of the obviously lightly radioactive depleted uranium are minimal (if indeed present) when compared to the other issues. Those people do not have the luxury of conducting scientific experiments, but we still have the responsibility to accurately report what is going on. This is important because inaccurate reporting can cause an unjustified marginalization in the future, if it is later discovered that the radioactive effects of the pollutants were not to blame. For example, if you frame an argument against depleted uranium munitions as "this stuff is radioactive!", you are going to lose valuable support and sympathy when it becomes clear that the radioactivity in depleted uranium does not account for the wide range of symptoms that you originally attributed to it. "The food they are eating is radioactive" by itself, means next to nothing. It is true of all people. At least give us the radioactivity in estimated banana equivalent dosage.
    - bitcartel 14y ago
      What chance do people have for accurate reporting? With Fukushima, the Japanese government kept raising the 'safe' or "'allowable' limit of radiation, every time the detected levels breached limits, thus making a mockery of their own guidelines. Meanwhile, discussion about safety limits were framed around 'natural' and 'background' radiation, without informing people that caesium-137 and strontium-90 are man-made by-products of nuclear fission (which some would argue the acceptable limit is zero). By all means, let's do the science, but in the absence of rigorous experiments, I don't think it's scaremongering to err on the side of caution when anecdotal evidence points to serious health issues.
      - jlgreco 14y ago
        Governments changing regulations should in no way hinder accurate reporting. It should merely create more material to report. How do you think that reporting works? >Meanwhile, discussion about safety limits were framed around 'natural' and 'background' radiation, without informing people that caesium-137 and strontium-90 are man-made by-products of nuclear fission (which some would argue the acceptable limit is zero). This just makes me suspect that you really are not qualified to have this conversation. What, pray tell, is the difference in danger between an alpha particle that comes from a man-made isotope, and one that comes from a natural isotope? That you use scare quotes ('natural' and 'background' radiation) gives me additional pause. You do realize that radiation is radiation, no matter how the source of it was made, right? Naturally occurring radiation is no less real than radiation that emanates from substances which we create. Comparing radiation exposures to the baseline background levels is the only rational thing to do. It is impossible to have a rational discussion about radiation if you don't do that. > I don't think it's scaremongering to err on the side of caution Certainly. Tell people what is known, the limits of what is known, the consequences of possible realities, and what they should do to protect themselves. That is reasonable reporting. However, simply mentioning that "radioactive things are being eaten", is scare mongering. It sounds scary, but the statement is true of from natural organic fruit from two-thousand years ago before industrialized society to a slightly charred poundcake from Hiroshima after August 6th 1945. Without specifying the parameters, it means nothing but induces fear nevertheless. It is textbook scare mongering, and besides being absolute shit journalism, it is actively harmful for the reasons I have previously laid out.
  - jrockway 14y ago
    Among any population, there's going to be a certain number of miscarriages, birth defects, leukemia, and early deaths. It's easy to blame the toxic waste dump because that intuitively makes sense, but without any hard data, it's hard to draw a scientific conclusion. Elevated background radiation simply doesn't cause that many additional cancer deaths. I read this article today which does a decent job of estimating cancer deaths based on a certain amount of exposure: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444772404577589270444059332.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044477240457758... Some locations recorded doses as high as 22 rem (total exposure before evacuation). Afterward, the levels of radiation dropped quickly; the largest component came from iodine, and its level dropped by 50% every eight days. How many cancers will such a dose trigger? To calculate an answer, assume that the entire population of that 2-rem-plus region, about 22,000 people, received the highest dose: 22 rem. (This obviously overestimates the danger.) The number of excess cancers expected is the dose (22 rem) multiplied by the population (22,000), divided by 2,500. This equals 194 excess cancers.
    - bitcartel 14y ago
      You may be right, but there will probably never be a scientific conclusion because who is going to fund an independent and rigorous scientific study? Would the government and mining companies risk their profits? If you lived there and had seen the onset of serious health issues ever since the factory came to town, wouldn't the anecdotal evidence be enough to convince you of the cause? If I observe a zombie eating a person, and that person comes back from the dead to attack othres, I don't need to know if it's the bite that's responsible, I just need to stay away from zombies.
jrockway 14y ago
I'm such a rebel that today I ate two bananas (which are radioactive.)
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
jasonwatkinspdx 14y ago
Radioactive material enters and leaves your body every day. You have roughly 40 grams of potassium in your body at any given moment. Roughly 40 milligrams of that are a radioactive isotope (and a gamma emitter at that). Note that this isn't due to human industry: the radioactive potassium in your body was formed in stars billions of years ago. It's everywhere, and in nearly every natural aggregate material on earth, be it organic or not. You are roughly 1 part per million radioactive potassium. Will this give you cancer? Possibly. Some couple 100 people per year globally will die of cancers induced by this potassium. This is just part of the radioactive background risk that we accept as natural. You can't have an accurate conversation about material risks without quantifying concentration vs the background.
- teeja 14y ago
  It's good that people know these facts. But it's also obvious that additions to the burden of "background radiation" cause increased likelihood of resultant cancers (and other, more ignorable mutations in fauna and flora). (This is much the same discussion we had about petrochemical toxins after "Silent Spring".)
  - jasonwatkinspdx 14y ago
    Yes, but how alarmed we are about some things, and how tolerant we are of others is largely irrational. For example, living near Denver for a year will expose you to more radiation than living next to Fukushima during the accident would. This is because there's high radon in the Denver area geography. But I'd bet if you asked all of the couple million people if they're safer from cancer in Denver or Fukushima all but a handful of nutbars and nuclear industry folks would answer Denver. I don't mean to just be an apologist here: we should care a lot about toxic releases of all forms. But right now the discussion is entirely dominated by alarmism and there's little accurate information. This is disastrous because it means we direct too many resources toward lessor risks, and the media and population as a whole ignores larger risks.

It's not scaremongering when radioactive material finds it way into the human body through breathing and eating.

jlgreco 14y ago

Of course it is, if you use "radioactive" as a binary label without specifying the particular parameters.

bitcartel 14y ago
The residents don't have the luxury of conducting scientific experiments, they are the experiment, and the results speak for themselves. Miscarriages, birth defects, leukemia, early deaths. Pretty binary to me.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  Not in the slightest. Those things could very likely be caused, at least in part, by toxicity not radioactivity. For example, deleted uranium has been seen to cause very similar issues, but nearly all of the issues associated with depleted uranium come from the fact that it is a heavy metal, not terribly unlike mercury. Issues caused by the radioactivity of the obviously lightly radioactive depleted uranium are minimal (if indeed present) when compared to the other issues. Those people do not have the luxury of conducting scientific experiments, but we still have the responsibility to accurately report what is going on. This is important because inaccurate reporting can cause an unjustified marginalization in the future, if it is later discovered that the radioactive effects of the pollutants were not to blame. For example, if you frame an argument against depleted uranium munitions as "this stuff is radioactive!", you are going to lose valuable support and sympathy when it becomes clear that the radioactivity in depleted uranium does not account for the wide range of symptoms that you originally attributed to it. "The food they are eating is radioactive" by itself, means next to nothing. It is true of all people. At least give us the radioactivity in estimated banana equivalent dosage.
  - bitcartel 14y ago
    What chance do people have for accurate reporting? With Fukushima, the Japanese government kept raising the 'safe' or "'allowable' limit of radiation, every time the detected levels breached limits, thus making a mockery of their own guidelines. Meanwhile, discussion about safety limits were framed around 'natural' and 'background' radiation, without informing people that caesium-137 and strontium-90 are man-made by-products of nuclear fission (which some would argue the acceptable limit is zero). By all means, let's do the science, but in the absence of rigorous experiments, I don't think it's scaremongering to err on the side of caution when anecdotal evidence points to serious health issues.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      Governments changing regulations should in no way hinder accurate reporting. It should merely create more material to report. How do you think that reporting works? >Meanwhile, discussion about safety limits were framed around 'natural' and 'background' radiation, without informing people that caesium-137 and strontium-90 are man-made by-products of nuclear fission (which some would argue the acceptable limit is zero). This just makes me suspect that you really are not qualified to have this conversation. What, pray tell, is the difference in danger between an alpha particle that comes from a man-made isotope, and one that comes from a natural isotope? That you use scare quotes ('natural' and 'background' radiation) gives me additional pause. You do realize that radiation is radiation, no matter how the source of it was made, right? Naturally occurring radiation is no less real than radiation that emanates from substances which we create. Comparing radiation exposures to the baseline background levels is the only rational thing to do. It is impossible to have a rational discussion about radiation if you don't do that. > I don't think it's scaremongering to err on the side of caution Certainly. Tell people what is known, the limits of what is known, the consequences of possible realities, and what they should do to protect themselves. That is reasonable reporting. However, simply mentioning that "radioactive things are being eaten", is scare mongering. It sounds scary, but the statement is true of from natural organic fruit from two-thousand years ago before industrialized society to a slightly charred poundcake from Hiroshima after August 6th 1945. Without specifying the parameters, it means nothing but induces fear nevertheless. It is textbook scare mongering, and besides being absolute shit journalism, it is actively harmful for the reasons I have previously laid out.
- jrockway 14y ago
  Among any population, there's going to be a certain number of miscarriages, birth defects, leukemia, and early deaths. It's easy to blame the toxic waste dump because that intuitively makes sense, but without any hard data, it's hard to draw a scientific conclusion. Elevated background radiation simply doesn't cause that many additional cancer deaths. I read this article today which does a decent job of estimating cancer deaths based on a certain amount of exposure: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444772404577589270444059332.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044477240457758... Some locations recorded doses as high as 22 rem (total exposure before evacuation). Afterward, the levels of radiation dropped quickly; the largest component came from iodine, and its level dropped by 50% every eight days. How many cancers will such a dose trigger? To calculate an answer, assume that the entire population of that 2-rem-plus region, about 22,000 people, received the highest dose: 22 rem. (This obviously overestimates the danger.) The number of excess cancers expected is the dose (22 rem) multiplied by the population (22,000), divided by 2,500. This equals 194 excess cancers.
  - bitcartel 14y ago
    You may be right, but there will probably never be a scientific conclusion because who is going to fund an independent and rigorous scientific study? Would the government and mining companies risk their profits? If you lived there and had seen the onset of serious health issues ever since the factory came to town, wouldn't the anecdotal evidence be enough to convince you of the cause? If I observe a zombie eating a person, and that person comes back from the dead to attack othres, I don't need to know if it's the bite that's responsible, I just need to stay away from zombies.

jrockway 14y ago

I'm such a rebel that today I ate two bananas (which are radioactive.)

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

jasonwatkinspdx 14y ago

Radioactive material enters and leaves your body every day. You have roughly 40 grams of potassium in your body at any given moment. Roughly 40 milligrams of that are a radioactive isotope (and a gamma emitter at that). Note that this isn't due to human industry: the radioactive potassium in your body was formed in stars billions of years ago. It's everywhere, and in nearly every natural aggregate material on earth, be it organic or not. You are roughly 1 part per million radioactive potassium. Will this give you cancer? Possibly. Some couple 100 people per year globally will die of cancers induced by this potassium. This is just part of the radioactive background risk that we accept as natural. You can't have an accurate conversation about material risks without quantifying concentration vs the background.

teeja 14y ago
It's good that people know these facts. But it's also obvious that additions to the burden of "background radiation" cause increased likelihood of resultant cancers (and other, more ignorable mutations in fauna and flora). (This is much the same discussion we had about petrochemical toxins after "Silent Spring".)
- jasonwatkinspdx 14y ago
  Yes, but how alarmed we are about some things, and how tolerant we are of others is largely irrational. For example, living near Denver for a year will expose you to more radiation than living next to Fukushima during the accident would. This is because there's high radon in the Denver area geography. But I'd bet if you asked all of the couple million people if they're safer from cancer in Denver or Fukushima all but a handful of nutbars and nuclear industry folks would answer Denver. I don't mean to just be an apologist here: we should care a lot about toxic releases of all forms. But right now the discussion is entirely dominated by alarmism and there's little accurate information. This is disastrous because it means we direct too many resources toward lessor risks, and the media and population as a whole ignores larger risks.