[Peace-discuss] BBC nuclear gibberish - not 8 days, more like 3 months

Sat Mar 26 15:04:23 CDT 2011

It sometimes seems to me that people want to see the worst happen, and hence distrust all contrary statements to their distrust, so as to defend their bias.
--mkb

On Mar 26, 2011, at 2:39 PM, Stuart Levy wrote:

> On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 02:15:05PM -0500, Karen Medina wrote:
>> I disagree with Mort, there is more to be concerned about: the BBC is
>> saying that there is not much to be concerned about and nothing to
>> worry about 8 days from now. The half life is not the end of the
>> radioactivity. The BBC is spreading wrong information: The half life
>> is not the end of the radioactivity.
> 
> Yes.  And I don't know whether this is the BBC uncritically
> passing along disinformation coming from is the Japanese government,
> or whether the BBC is taking other statements and presenting
> them this way.  Either way it's a story:
> 
> In the first case, the Japanese government would be
> improperly minimizing the scope of the risk.
> 
> In the second, it may be that the Japanese government
> is making correct (if sometimes unhelpful) statements,
> but that the BBC is completely misrepresenting them.
> Note the on-line BBC article which I mentioned in my other posting
> which attributes the "no human concern after 8 days" to "officials"
>     http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12869184
> It also quotes one Japanese gov't official, but he is
> saying something entirely different.
> 
> 
>> -karen medina
>> 
>> On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 11:23 AM, Morton K. Brussel
>> <brussel at illinois.edu> wrote:
>>> From your reference:
>>> But he also stressed there is "no immediate risk to public health," as the
>>> changing tides will dilute the iodine-131, and its half-life, or the amount
>>> of time it takes for it to lose half its radioactivity, is only eight days.
>>> Another note:  No one knows exactly what "acceptable" is: It could be
>>> multiples of what has been currently set.
>>> [From Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine-131.
>>> The risk of thyroid cancer in later life appears to diminish with increasing
>>> age at time of exposure. Most risk estimates are based on studies in which
>>> radiation exposures occurred in children or teenagers. When adults are
>>> exposed, it has been difficult for epidemiologists to detect a statistically
>>> significant difference in the rates of thyroid disease above that of a
>>> similar but otherwise unexposed group. ]
>>> Your last two paragraphs are most pertinent. The concentration was evidently
>>> quite localized, and the sea is large. An instance of homeopathy |:=), based
>>> on the concept of hormesis [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis] ?
>>> There's nothing very alarming here except that it indicates continued, not
>>> understood, leakage from the reactor complex. It might have come from the
>>> wash spilled over the reactors to cool them.
>>> --mkb
>>> On Mar 26, 2011, at 10:09 AM, Stuart Levy wrote:
>>> 
>>> Heard last night a BBC report of very high (> 1000 times acceptable)
>>> levels of radioactive iodine in the ocean, a few hundred meters
>>> from the Fukushima plants.
>>> 
>>> This is alarming.  But more alarming is the completely *false* comment
>>> made twice during the report, once by the commentator introducing
>>> the story and again by correspondent Chris Hogg, that
>>> "after 8 days the levels of iodine will no longer be of human concern".
>>> 
>>> That sounds comforting.  Stay clear of the water for a week or two
>>> and everything will be fine, right?
>>> 
>>> That figure seems to be taken from the half-life of the longest-lived
>>> radioactive isotope of iodine, which is indeed 8 days.  But that is
>>> *not* the time at which it will cease to be of concern.
>>> 
>>> Given that the sampled water's iodine level was over 1000 (actually 1250)
>>> times higher than the amount considered acceptable, it would take over
>>> ten times iodine's half-life -- around *three months* --
>>> before radioactive decay would reduce it to 'acceptable' levels.
>>> 
>>> Of course other things would happen to the water in that time too --
>>> mixing with more ocean water, perhaps takeup by marine organisms.
>>> Decay isn't the only factor affecting environmental exposure.
>>> But this kind of misstatement is unconscionable.  And it's not hard
>>> to get it right, as in this Japan Times story:
>>> 
>>>    http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110326x1.html
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Peace-discuss mailing list
>>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>>> http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
>>> 
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Peace-discuss mailing list
>>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>>> http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> -- karen medina
>> "The really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." - Mark Twain
>> _______________________________________________
>> Peace-discuss mailing list
>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>> http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss