Radiation Age and the prudent person

[Wibla]

Hell… if it glows in the dark, I doubt a radiation detector is needed…

Hey, stop discriminating against soviet submariners!

 

[svetz]

Did it glow in the dark?

Not to my knowledge, but my wife light's up a room when she walks in and she drank the water too.

...The "500 mSv does damage to red blood cells" --> check that table I posted here:...

That was from that post ;-)
Possibly I'm not getting it. That chart only shows dosages? I'm pretty sure a 500 mSv over the course of 8 hours (62.5 mSv/hr) is far less dangerous than 500 mSv over the course of a minute (30,000 mSv/hr). But, each ends up giving you a dose of 500 mSv. Okay, I see you agree in your next paragraph.

Seems like charts like that need something to correlate dose-rate too.

 

[upnorthandpersonal]

That chart only shows dosages?

Check the top of the chart - it states 'exposure time' : instant, one hour, one day and one year:

 

[curiouscarbon]

I bought radon sensors (radoneye) and they vary clearly with ventilation. One outside for baseline. I consider Radon to be one of the most widespread radioactive threats to the average person’s health, at least from the maps I’ve seen of the USA.

People seem to have varying opinions on radiation dose vs affect. I’ve read of the term “hormesis” and it certainly activated my “bs” alarm.

 

[John Frum]

I bought radon sensors (radoneye) and they vary clearly with ventilation. One outside for baseline. I consider Radon to be one of the most widespread radioactive threats to the average person’s health, at least from the maps I’ve seen of the USA.

People seem to have varying opinions on radiation dose vs affect. I’ve read of the term “hormesis” and it certainly activated my “bs” alarm.

Pretty sure hormesis is a thing.
Not at all sure it applies to radiation though.

 

[curiouscarbon]

Feel that it’s a thing with other stuff “rudeness hormesis” “money hormesis” “power hormesis”

I too am entirely unsure it applies to radiation in any way. Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[John Frum]

Feel that it’s a thing with other stuff “rudeness hormesis” “money hormesis” “power hormesis”

I too am entirely unsure it applies to radiation in any way. Thanks for your thoughts.

My experience is with hormesis is mostly anecdotal.
As in "the garbage man has the strongest constitution in the neighborhood".
The counterpoint is all the nurses that look like death warmed over during flu season.

 

[upnorthandpersonal]

radoneye

It's an ok-ish detector. It needs calibration every couple of years, and can be very sensitive to temperature changes. I believe it takes an hour or so to get stable readings, which is not uncommon. However for the price, it's very good especially for a consumer level device. I think I have one or two somewhere in my lab.

Radon is definitely underestimated.

varying opinions on radiation dose vs affect

It really shouldn't be a matter of opinion. It's all statistics. The longer you're exposed to ionizing radiation, the more damage you get and the higher the risk of developing cancer. Additional variables include type of radiation ad where you are exposed (alphas are more ionizing than gammas, but don't penetrate as well - hence the danger of Radon, an alpha emitter, inhaled), and also energy of the particle, etc. There are a couple of variables, including time exposed that make a decent statistical model of the dangers involved.

This has been studied for quite some time and is well understood.

 

[svetz]

Having fun with that map... if I did it right (and Russia is accurately reporting the data), 368 cpm is ~ 3 μSv/h.

They don't seem to convert cleanly:

... 108 CPM is about 1 uSv/hr for C060, and for Cs137 it is around 120 CPM per 1 uSv/hr. For the GM 45, the numbers are closer to 3600 CPM for Co60 and 3000 CPM for Cs137, or 360 CPM and 300 CPM per per 1 uSv/hr, respectively.

Perhaps that way spectrum on a scintillation meter is important?

​

Fukushima isn't on it, but the current radiation there is ~10 μSv/h (? ref, that can't be right can it?) Well, perhaps it is...the image from this ref is disturbing...if that bottom scale is meters, then the Cesium fallout extends about ~4 to 5Km northwest of the plant?

So, if the half-life for Cesium is 30 years and that's what it is, then in 2051 the areas that are at 10 μSv/hr should be 5?

 

[curiouscarbon]

It really shouldn't be a matter of opinion. It's all statistics.

Maybe to be more specific, I found much more data points about miners being exposed to 100x+ residential concentrations, than actual residential dose evaluations and stuff. Probably just haven’t looked hard enough.

The statistical spectrum seems to not be uniformly sampled, so it feels unclear to me. I trust that there’s a model to be found, but my gut says it’s informed more by edge cases when it comes to Rd.

My gut tells me that it’s more likely that radon concentration will be accurately and frequently evaluated in a mine vs a home (cost of equipment). (Are there datasets of USA residential indoor radon levels and cancer incidence? most of the material I read used maps to estimate the radon or measured it after the fact. i would want to see papers that evaluate cancer risk in residents and there’s a complete history of indoor concentration levels, preferably occupancy too so it’s obvious when it’s being exposed)

I have ~5 of the radoneye and after observing the diurnal variations for a few years they feel reliable enough to have a chance at being a canary should the structure become damaged and allow entrainment.

Added to the fact that lower time lower concentration makes the signal likely to be even more down in the noise floor. e.g. needing to study 10000x many residential people than people exposed to high dose in mines. edit: living in a home vs working at a mine, duration exposure…hm anyways

double edit: I read that circulating air in a room can, to some degree, accelerate radon turning into its daughter particles which are less harmful? is it safe to say that having a fan circulating air in a room in any way affects the radon concentration? there are various species and i’m an amateur when it comes to this so i’m probably munging different species.

Thank you for your thoughts @upnorthandpersonal

 

[svetz]

...

Saw this on Cesium from Wikipedia:

Caesium-137 has a half-life of about 30.17 years.[1] About 94.6% decays by beta emission to a metastable nuclear isomer of barium: barium-137m (137mBa, Ba-137m). The remainder directly populates the ground state of barium-137, which is stable. Metastable barium has a half-life of about 153 seconds, and is responsible for all of the gamma ray emissions in samples of caesium-137.

I'm pretty sure I saw somewhere in this thread that beta wasn't particularly dangerous unless you ate it (hence the importance of food/water detection), so if all that radiation is beta, then only 5.4% is gamma? So, as long as you're not growing food the area isn't actually all that dangerous? I guess breathing it would be bad.

 

[upnorthandpersonal]

but the current radiation there is ~10 Sv/h

At the containment vessel - yeah, not that surprising really.

Fukushima was bad. Really bad - but the total number of people that have and will die from the Fukushima related radiation exposure will be much, much less than the amount of people that died due to the tsunami. That was the true disaster and danger, and I feel there is too much attention on the scary radiation part and not the continued struggle of families today.

I'm pretty sure I saw somewhere in this thread that beta wasn't particularly dangerous unless you ate it (hence the importance of food/water detection), so if all that radiation is beta, then only 5.4% is gamma? So, as long as you're not growing food the area isn't overly dangerous?

Yes, it decays through betas:

With the 662keV gamma spike being the tell tale spike indicating the decay of Cs137 in the decay chain, and used for calibration purposes for example.

It is not correct to say only 5.4% is gamma. It's just so that 137Cs decays through both 1172keV betas and 511keV betas, which then leads to Ba-137m1 (2 minute half life or so, and Nuclear Isomer) being formed which in turn decays into 662keV gammas. This is not '5.4%' of the energy of the 137Cs isotope. Of course, Cesium also dissolves in water, so you get all kinds of fun stuff if you drink it - not just because of Betas.

 

[svetz]

Thanks for those corrections!

...Fukushima was bad. Really bad - but the total number of people that will die from the Fukushima related radiation exposure will be much, much less than the amount of people that died due to the tsunami.

Wow! That's a very accurate assessment and helps put perspective on it all. Didn't know the numbers so had to look it up. ~19,500 people died and a million buildings were destroyed by the tsunami [ref]. Compared to 1 radiation death and 6 with cancer or leukemia, 37 with physical injuries, 2 workers taken to hospital with radiation burns [ref]. Although I also saw this:

...Injuries related to nuclear explosure or the discharge of radioactive water in Fukushima are difficult to trace as 60% of the 20,000 workers on-site declined to participate state-sponsored free health checks.... [ref]

I didn't realize it was that bad, I knew they have tsunami buoys, so naturally wondered what happened... from Wikipedia:

The tsunami warning issued by the Japan Meteorological Agency was the most serious on its warning scale; it was rated as a "major tsunami", being at least 3 metres (9.8 ft) high.[136] The actual height prediction varied, the greatest being for Miyagi at 6 metres (20 ft) high.[137] The tsunami inundated a total area of approximately 561 square kilometres (217 sq mi) in Japan

The earthquake took place at 14:46 JST (UTC 05:46) around 67 kilometres (42 mi) from the nearest point on Japan's coastline, and initial estimates indicated the tsunami would have taken 10 to 30 minutes to reach the areas first affected, and then areas farther north and south based on the geography of the coastline.[139][140] At 15:55 JST, a tsunami was observed flooding Sendai Airport, which is located near the coast of Miyagi Prefecture,[141][142] with waves sweeping away cars and planes and flooding various buildings as they traveled inland

So about an hour's advance warning...

Among the factors in the high death toll was the unexpectedly large water surge. The sea walls in several cities had been built to protect against tsunamis of much lower heights. Also, many people caught in the tsunami thought they were on high enough ground to be safe.

According to a special committee on disaster prevention designated by the Japanese government, the tsunami protection policy had been intended to deal with only tsunamis that had been scientifically proved to occur repeatedly.

This reminds me of how mariners reported 100' waves in the Gulf of Mexico. Which scientists scoffed at, physics said waves could never be over 60' there and attributed the mariner's measurements to adrenalin. When measured with satellites, it was the scientists that had to go back and sharpen their pencils.

 

[robby]

It ain't hard. If you can afford expensive Geiger counters you can afford to move. Nuclear accidents are not that likely. Chernobyl was a combination of faulty design and a really screwed up hierarchical structure in the government of the USSR. Fukishima was the result a very bad placement for the reactor and a once in ten thousand years tsunami.

How does a $300 Geiger counter compare with the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars that it cost to move?
Why would I want to move anyway. You seem to be confusing me with someone else. I don't live anywhere near a nuclear power plant!

Consider that worrying enough about nuclear fallout from a reactor accident that necessitates having a Geiger counter hinges on a belief that all the Geiger counters at the plant will malfunction during an emergency or the belief that an attempt will be made to cover it up. In an emergency you will have to evacuate, there really is no other option and a Geiger counter isn't going to help you evacuate.

If I lived near a nuclear reactor I'd spend my time learning about the type of reactor it is and what the probability of an accident actually is, where the fallout would end up and what the best evacuation route would be. But that's me, I like to know. It helps me determine actual risk.

That does not apply to me. I only bought a Geiger counter after Fukishima to test the canned Tuna and other seafood for contamination.

By the way, the other disadvantage of GM tube based devices is their need for frequent calibration. Take some of those higher numbers on that map with a grain of salt or two (or a whole bag in the case of that one pin showing a count over 4000).

 

[svetz]

Thread Summary to date​

Just a quick wrap-up of what might be prudent…. and what I at least learned....


Potassium Iodine: Inexpensive and has a long shelf-life. Possibly good during any initial exposure, possibly health side-effects if you’re salt sensitive.

GammaPix - Useful to let you know if you've entered a dangerous area, but no real sensitivity beyond danger/safe and tricky to use

Smart Gieger - $30 cellphone audio jack. From this video seems insensitive at low counts, +/- 50% over 60 Sv/h; so better but not great.

Dose cards - they keep track of how much radiation you've been exposed to, but not the dose rate.

RADEX Obsidian Scintillation Detector - Can detect radiation in food/air/things (not water). Very precise. RadonEye was also mentioned, seemed more specific to radon (air) than food.

Types of detectors
GM tubes need frequent (annual, monthly?) calibration and are fragile. Scintillation devices also provide spectrum data that can tell you what's causing the radiation. The least accurate are photodiodes as found in low-end devices.

Do you need a Detector?
There are websites that display radiation counts (see post#23 or RadNet). Community maps such as in the link may not have accurate readings. The folks on the forum that have detectors seem to have them more for radon than concerns about nuclear fallout from a terrorist attack or nuclear accident. For radon dissolved in well-water, you need to send a sample to a lab. On Radnet, it looks like you want to divide the gamma gross count CPM by 60 to get nSv/hr, could be wrong about that. RadNet also reports on local water radiation.

Radiation
Most high wavelength radiation (e.g., green light, wiFi, microwaves) are not ionizing. Absorbing them generally heats you up (like being at the beach), that doesn't mean they're completely safe... for example, sunlight also contains UV light which is ionizing and has been linked to skin cancer. It varies widely, but the average person receives about 7 μSv/d or 2400 μSv/y. Smoking 1.5 packs a day for a year gets you ~+36,000 μSv/yr (apparently the tobacco plants are pretty good at absorbing particles, perhaps we should plant them around Chernobyl/Fukushima?). The lowest annual dose without an increase in risk of cancer statistically is about 100,000 μSv/y or ~11 uSv/h.

The most common radiation types of ionizing radiation encountered from decomposing nuclei (e.g., not for example medical X-Rays) are alpha, beta, and gamma. Alpha and beta are easily stopped, but if ingested or breathed in can be very bad for you. Gamma can penetrate ~14 feet of water, 7' of concrete, 1.3' of lead, it's pretty hard to stop.

There's a chart in post #27 that shows the effect of radiation based on the exposure time (4 grey columns across representing instantaneous, hours, day, and annual) of dosages going down the chart. The impact of the radiation is a combination of the total dose, and the rate at which the dose is received.

Like all radiation, the strength of the radiation follows an inverse square, so if you know the strength where you're at and the epicenter you can make educated guesses what the strength will be at different places. However, fallout follows wind patterns, from post #89 we can see how the fallout plume from Fukushima went northwest. As bad as the Fukushima accident was, the "dangerous" part is perhaps only 5 or 6 kilometers from the reactor. If you spend a day in the green part then you'd be exposed to 2 μSv/h, or about 3x what the average person sees. The < 100,000 μSv/y to minimize cancer works out to ~11 μSv/h, so even the orange areas wouldn't increase your risk of cancer.

The real danger from the non-blue/green areas would be ingesting anything grown there, or inhaling radioactive particles which would continue to expose you to radiation even after you left. Which is why some have a desire for a detector sensitive enough to measure radiation in food. In addition to the radiation being bad for you, so are the actual metals.



Special thanks to everyone that contributed to the thread and especially @upnorthandpersonal our very own expert!

 

[svetz]

More on Potassium Iodine [ref]

Radioactive Iodine is a major fission product that may be released during nuclear power plant accidents and has a half-life of 8 days.

Iodine is of particular interest because it tends to concentrate in the thyroid gland, just as iron concentrates in blood or calcium in bone.
An amount of radiation exposure which would be of little concern if spread throughout the entire body, may become a problem if concentrated in the thyroid. To prevent this exposure, you may be advised to take a thyroid blocking pill, typically containing potassium iodide. The thyroid blocking pill contains non-radioactive iodine which, when taken before or immediately after exposure to radioactive iodine, saturates the thyroid with non-radioactive iodine. Since additional iodine will not be absorbed by the thyroid, any radioactive iodine subsequently taken up by the body will remain spread throughout the body and will be quickly excreted.

ref

...Chernobyl data provide the most reliable information available to date on the relationship between internal thyroid radioactive dose and cancer risk. They suggest that the risk of thyroid cancer is inversely related to age, and that, especially in young children, it may accrue at very low levels of radioiodine exposure.

Short-term administration of KI at thyroid blocking doses is safe and, in general, more so in children than adults. The risks of stable iodine administration include sialadenitis (an inflammation of the salivary gland, of which no cases were reported in Poland among users after the Chernobyl accident), gastrointestinal disturbances, allergic reactions and minor rashes. In addition, persons with known iodine sensitivity should avoid KI, as should individuals with dermatitis herpetiformis and hypocomplementemic vasculitis, extremely rare conditions associated with an increased risk of iodine hypersensitivity.

 

[pvdude]

Interesting thread!
Motivated me to find my 1961 Victoreen CD geiger counter.
I had it calibrated years ago, measures gamma and beta.

(The chunk of Orange Fiesta tableware from the early 20th century was radioactive)
Some of my old military radio equipment used Radium for the meter dials.

But after sitting in front of this radio equipment for years,
I no longer notice the tiny tentacles emanating from my forehead….

 

[curiouscarbon]

Learned about this type of lamp today. ?

Gas mantle - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Bob B]

Learned about this type of lamp today. ?

Gas mantle - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Wow ..... I've used a lot of those mantle's in lanterns over the years .... Never would have guessed they had a radioactive component.

How about the watch I wore my whole childhood that glowed in the dark.

 

[MrNatural22]

Learned about this type of lamp today. ?

Gas mantle - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Ahhh the ole Colman lantern with the fragile mantles that we hung up and watched the swarm of flying bugs fly around outside camping.
They also were used in early campers and camp trailers.
People sometimes used them as a source of heat in those older trailers with no ventilation and never woke up because of the carbon monoxide they emitted. ?‍?