[ RadSafe ] RadSafe Digest, Vol 718, Issue 1

[Ed Battle]

Thank you, Roger Helbig, for the web address
(http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/july-dec11/japan_08-16.html) for that
entertaining report. In my opinion, the entire video clip was meaningless
hyperbole! The daring young man wearing no protection had to run because his
radiation meter (whatever that was) "was rising". Well, all of our meters
are either rising or falling at any given moment and that alone is no basis
for action. Also, he said, " The threat posed by long-term exposure to
radiation means former residents may never return home". There is no threat
from long term radiation alone, since we all live on a radioactive planet.
In other words, without quantification, words are just random noise, like a
Congressional speech. He did show a map with circles which included a red
zone where a dangerous radiation plume was drifting outside the circles. The
legend at the lower left showed that zone to have a dose rate of 2.5 microSv
per hour. If we look at 10CFRPart20
(http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part020/part020-1301.html
) a member of our general public would be allowed to live in that area 16.67
days, or to go to work at a regular 8hr-5day job for 10 weeks. An "Emergency
Worker" could stay 50 times that length. Hardly time for panic. Someone
should tell PBS/Mr. John Sparks about background readings
(http://www.angelfire.com/mo/radioadaptive/ramsar.html) in Kerala, India or
Ramsar, Iran or Guarapari, Brazil or Yangjiang, China, etc. where people
still lead normal lives.  
Ed Battle