Dose Correlation/Brain power

["Björn Cedervall" <bjorn_cedervall@hotmail.com>]

Based on the brain’s consumption of glucose – I recall a value
of about 5 grams per hour, this can be translated into about
36 x 2.1 x 5 grams of ATP per hour – lets say about 360 grams
of ATP per hour (2.1 is my rough Mw ratio – don’t have an
exact numer at hand). Anyway – this in turn corresponds to about
25 W. If I remember right the heat fraction was in the order
11 W to 14 W (1.5 kg brain). This is, I assume, the same for
a lazy student and a physics professor.

As already pointed out – a dose/risk comparison is not appropriate. 
While kind of off-topic – Prof. Lars Ehrenberg (Sweden) and
another author published a paper in Nature 1957 discussing
the dangers of wearing pants (male gonad dose). There was more
depth in this paper than one may think at a first brief look. The
ideas went back to transition energy and rate constants for DNA
damage. Some comparison was made with ionizing radiation dose (the
nature of the damages discussed differ for these cases of course – heat
is probably more related to spontanous release of bases for instance). 
Needless to say, the publication was "commented" in our sensational 
media.

>I think this 4 watt light bulb analogy could give the wrong message. It 
may
>scare the heck out of some people. Especially if they think that a one
>second flash of light is equivalent to a full year's allowed exposure 
then
>radiation must be really dangerous even in small amounts.

Light bubd comparison: The real danger may be the light-melatonin-
estrogen connection. This remains to be shown however.

Bjorn
bjorn_cedervall@hotmail.com
Depts. Medical Radiation Biology & Medical Radiation Physics,
Karolinska Institutet, Box 260,
S-171 76 Stockholm, Sweden
Ph/fax: Int + 468 343525 (Med. Radiation Physics)
Website: http://www.geocities.com/WallStreet/Exchange/8256/
Any opinions expressed above are those of mine and may not necessarily coincide with those of others.
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