Zoomies

[jimbo]

Anyone following the media hysteria/hyperbole on reporting about the radiation issue in Japan??

I have been quite critical...because reports that say " 10,000 times greater than such and such" are meaningless, because we don't know what is "such and such"

Finally today, AP issues a report with numbers, but it raises more questions than it answers:

airborne radiation in Unit 2 measured 1,000 millisieverts per hour, four times the limit deemed safe by the government.

First, it is confusing to talk about airborne radiaotion in sieverts, because it really is measure in curies, or becquerels. But if there is 1000 millisieverts exposure, that is WAY more than any "limit deemed safe". 250 millisieverts is the CASUALTY DOSE, authorized for a radiation worker in a lifesaving situation. 100 millisieverts is the dose above which there is measurable increase in cancers. Just 2000 millisieverts exposure can be expected to cause severe radiation poisoning, with some fatalities. 4 sieverts is LD %. 8 sieverts is fatal to 100% of humans exposed. The workers on the ground at Chernobel received 50 sieverts in 10 minutes, and their bodies will continue to glow for 10000 years!!!!

The media is clueless and uninformed, and if a level of danger is experienced on this side of the pond, they will be unable to accurately assess it and inform us.

[Cookie]

Jim, the effects of rads is unbelievable. I relate it to my mom. She died 26 years ago, and I am certain the breast cancer didn't kill her, but the radiation did. I taught my own mom to read and to write when I was 15, she was a fast learner but, not perfect. What absolutely was amazing me to me was what she did years later at 53. She kept a little notepad when she started taking radiation. I think she knew something was not right, yet never said anything to me, and to my knowledge to anyone else, but, in this notepad she wrote that she was put under the machine, was under there for a few minutes, pulled back out, sat back in the hallway, brought back in again. She wrote what she had overheard, it was a word she struggled to spell. Malfunctioned. She wrote the date, the time, and then, mal funtied.

The burns on her chest was horrible. I was 8 months pregnant and offering my skin to her doctor and he told me this, " we can't help her, if we did skin graphs they would turn malignant." When, I asked why, he said, " too much radiation."

My point is this. My mom was only under a few minutes. A couple times a week, for a couple months. I swear, my mom died of radiation poisoning. It doesn't take much. My mom was in huge pain til, the day she died. I didn't want her to leave, but, I didn't want her to hurt. Radiation, is something I believe is hard to control and I will never have it done. And, I think, we need to think of slowing down on building more plants for that very reason.

Whatever, is going on over there in Japan, isn't good, and all a person needs is some commonsense to understand that it is worse than anyone will say, or think. Why?

The same reason if you yell FIRE! Everyone is running and people get hurt. You don't live long when you got too much radiation. She lived a total of 19 months, the last 2 she was getting rads.