Does anyone else find themselves playing "How quickly can I shower so I sufficiently scrub off the nuclear radiation residue but not get stuck naked when the next big quake hits" every time you hop in the shower, or sitting on your couch with your phone in one hand, your computer open with NHK, BCC, CNN, Facebook, Japan Meteorological, and Tepco pulled up and refreshing every 30 minutes or more, and your tv on running the never-ending AC ads. Or on the other extreme, are you carrying on business as usual and avoiding all news in order to maintain as much normalcy as possible...OR have you already made the decision to run for the hills, get the hell out of Dodge...well after 3 days of this, I've decided to just figure things out on my own, starting with the biggest concern first.
Threat of Radiation -
Last night I woke up to find that nuclear radiation has blow into Tokyo. Before I made my trek down to immigration to stand in the 2hour line for a re-entry visa, I decided to figure out whether or not it'd be worth my wait. I got on-line and started reading. What I found, at this time the threat of nuclear radiation in Tokyo sits at 1/100th the accepted levels (siting my source 2...notice a pattern for information.... Or the more numbers based and not related to NHK). But what exactly do these numbers mean? To find out what these numbers mean check the chart at the bottom of the post stolen without permission from this site World Nuclear.org
To look at current radiation levels in Japan, check out: Japan Radiation levels
Here are the main prefectures listed on there:
1) Hokkaido, 2) Aomori-ken, 3)Iwate, 4) Miyagi, 5)Akita, 6) Yamagata, 7) Fukushima ....11) Saitama, 12) Chiba, 13) Tokyo, 14) Kanagawa
On the down side, NHK just posted that Radiation scanners have malfunctioned and they're not sure when they will get back up...in the meantime we are having 75km/h winds blasting Tokyo coming from the NNW.
It really makes one wonder what's going to happen next....
| 10,000 mSv (10 sieverts) as a short-term and whole-body dose would cause immediate illness, such as nausea and decreased white blood cell count, and subsequent death within a few weeks. Between 2 and 10 sieverts in a short-term dose would cause severe radiation sickness with increasing likelihood that this would be fatal. |
| 1,000 mSv (1 sievert) in a short-term dose is about the threshold for causing immediate radiation sickness in a person of average physical attributes, but would be unlikely to cause death. Above 1000 mSv, severity of illness increases with dose. If doses greater than 1000 mSv occur over a long period they are less likely to have early health effects, but they create a definite risk that cancer will develop many years later. |
| Above about 100 mSv, the probability of cancer (rather than the severity of illness) increases with dose. The estimated risk of fatal cancer is 5 of every 100 persons exposed to a dose of 1000 mSv (ie. if the normal incidence of fatal cancer were 25%, this dose would increase it to 30%). |
| 50 mSv is, conservatively, the lowest dose at which there is any evidence of cancer being caused in adults. It is also the highest dose which is allowed by regulation in any one year of occupational exposure. Dose rates greater than 50 mSv/yr arise from natural background levels in several parts of the world but do not cause any discernible harm to local populations. |
| 20 mSv/yr averaged over 5 years is the limit for radiological personnel such as employees in the nuclear industry, uranium or mineral sands miners and hospital workers (who are all closely monitored). |
| 10 mSv/yr is the maximum actual dose rate received by any Australian uranium miner. |
| 3-5 mSv/yr is the typical dose rate (above background) received by uranium miners in Australia and Canada. |
| 3 mSv/yr (approx) is the typical background radiation from natural sources in North America, including an average of almost 2 mSv/yr from radon in air. |
| 2 mSv/yr (approx) is the typical background radiation from natural sources, including an average of 0.7 mSv/yr from radon in air. This is close to the minimum dose received by all humans anywhere on Earth. |
| 0.3-0.6 mSv/yr is a typical range of dose rates from artificial sources of radiation, mostly medical. |
| 0.05 mSv/yr, a very small fraction of natural background radiation, is the design target for maximum radiation at the perimeter fence of a nuclear electricity generating station. In practice the actual dose is less. |
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