Fwd: TOMATOES

["Bjorn Cedervall" <bcradsafers@hotmail.com>]

Kjell sent me the comment below directly - I wrote back and asked if it was 
OK to post it as it is on Radsafers. So Kjell OK:d it. I like the comments 
although I cannot give any more precise response. I wouldn't be surprised 
however if tomatoes in this case are like comparing radiation doses to a 
critical group outside the fence of a nuclear power plant to the doses from 
natural background radiation. But this is just my wild guess.

Hmm... I taught botany for 14 years - maybe I could revive that and become a 
tomato inspector (the Solanaceae plant family has many other toxic plants 
like potatoes - better check'em also).

Bjorn Cedervall  bcradsafers@hotmail.com
-----------------------------------------
>From: "Johansen.Kjell" <Kjell.Johansen@wepco.com>
>To: "'BCRADSAFERS@HOTMAIL.COM'" <BCRADSAFERS@HOTMAIL.COM>
>Subject: TOMATOS
>Date: Thu, 6 Apr 2000 08:36:15 -0500
>
Kjaere Bjorn,
If I understand this correctly, the bacterai in our guts makes ethylene as a 
byproduct of their metabolism.  Something in our bodies converts the 
ethylene into ethylene oxide which is genotoxic. The geotoxicity is 
equivalent to roughly 400 mrem (4 >mSv) per year.

Tomatoes and other veggies add some more ethylene to the process.  So my 
questions are
1)  What is the mSv equivalent per tomato?
2)  What other vegetables produce ethylene and what is their mSv
equivalents?

I guess the movie "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" was not so far off after 
all.  We could regulate the number of tomatoes people were allowed to eat. 
We could set tomato standards for adults, teens, children, and infants. We 
could establish maximum permissible concentrations for tomatoes and other 
offending vegetable and vegetable product concentrations in various other 
food products. We could send out inspectors to make sure that people were 
not secretly growing tomatoes in their own gardens which would have to be
licensed by the Tomato Regulatory Commission.  The regulations would specify 
garden size, number and types of vegetables that could be grown, consumption 
rates, safe handling of tomato and other vegetable waste products.  etc. 
etc.  With all the extra people that would be needed to regulate vegetables, 
we could eliminate the unemployment problem.  Of course we would have to 
increase taxes in order to pay for all of this.

You know, if we work this right, we could start up whole new careers of 
protecting people from vegetables just by applying LNT to botanicals.  The 
only course left would be to stop eating altogether.

Kjell Johansen
Wisconsin Electric
Milwaukee

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