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Need for better judgment in use of medical ionising radiation

We’ve known about the risks of radiation for some time, but these three studies quantify the risks. Essentially, they show that relatively low doses of ionising radiation, previously considered ‘safe’ can translate into excess cancer cases.

We believe that these findings call for a change in imaging practice. First, ionising radiation should be a consideration for the referring doctor when deciding whether a patient needs a scan (and if so, what type). Second, imaging techniques and machines that reduce ionising radiation doses should always be used. Finally, government funding models must be reviewed to ensure there are no inappropriate incentives towards a radiating scan.

For example, in Australia, if a young patient presents to a GP with low back pain and the GP orders a scan, Medicare would fund a CT scan but not a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), even though this may be a safer alternative in terms of radiation.

The body of evidence is growing. We need to start translating evidence into practice

medical-radiationThe risks of ionising radiation: three new studies and their impact on imaging in sports medicine http://www.clinicalsportsmedicine.com/the-risks-of-ionising-radiation-three-new-studies-and-their-impact-on-imaging-in-sports-medicine-jessica-orchard-and-john-orchardJessica Orchard and John Orchard 2 July 13, In 2012, two major studies were published about the risks of ionising radiation from imaging. Pearce and colleagues’ study in The Lancet examined the excess risk of leukaemia and brain tumours for children and adolescents exposed to computed tomography (CT) scans. They found that children exposed to cumulative doses of 50mGy (3-5 CTs) may have triple the risk of leukaemia, and doses of 60mGy may have almost triple the risk of brain tumours.[1] In addition, the Pijpe and colleagues’ GEN-RAD-RISK paper in theBMJ[2] study showed that women such as Angelina Joliewho carry a specific mutation associated with breast cancer (BRCA1/2), and who were exposed to diagnostic radiation before the age of thirty, had almost twice the risk of breast cancer (with a dose-response pattern). This study involved lower doses, which we have previously considered fairly ‘safe’ (e.g. 4mGy from a single mammogram or shoulder X-ray).

On the basis of these studies, we wrote a blog post and started writing an editorial for theBritish Journal of Sports Medicine. While we were in the final stages of preparing the editorial,[3] a third study was published. The Matthews et al Australian data linkage study,[4] with an enormous cohort (11 million) showed that the adjusted overall cancer incidence for young people exposed to a CT scan was twenty-four percent greater than for those who were not exposed.

That is, one in every 1800 scans resulted in an excess cancer case. As the mean follow up time was only 9.5 years (relatively short in relation to the time taken to develop cancer), this suggests the true lifetime risk may be much higher. We await with interest the relative risk in older people to see whether the risks for the young also apply to those in middle age. Continue reading

July 5, 2013 Posted by | 2 WORLD, health, radiation | Leave a comment

Australia’s scandalous history of disease and death from nuclear bomb testing

A powerful manuscript entitled “The Black Mist and its Aftermath — Oral Histories by Lallie Lennon” (2010) was submitted to the South Australian and federal governments as well as to the International Atomic Energy Agency

Now aged in her 80s, Lallie has never had her health issues properly investigated, much less received any compensation. She continues to suffer from the beta burn-related skin condition to this day.

Professor Sir Ernest Titterton, the duplicitous architect of nuclear testing in Australia, typified the official contempt for survivors when he dismissed the Black Mist event as a “scare campaign”.

More recently, the ultra-right wing Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt has repeated this line.

flag-Australiahighly-recommendedAustralian atomic massacre still ignored http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/54394June 29, 2013 By David T. Rowlands  Nearly 60 years have passed since Totem 1, a British nuclear test in the Australian desert, was recklessly conducted in unfavourable meteorological conditions.

Nuclear testing of any sort, even in the most “controlled” of circumstances, is inherently abusive, a crime against the environment and humanity for countless generations to come. Yet the effects of Totem 1 were particularly bad, even by the warped standards of the era.

The mushroom cloud did not behave in the way it was supposed to. Instead of rising uniformly, part of it spread laterally, causing fallout to roll menacingly at ground level over a remote yet still populated corner of South Australia, sowing injury, illness and death in its wake.

The number of casualties is unknown because the secretive and unaccountable nuclear establishment has always declined to investigate the full impact of its own criminal negligence. But it has been suggested by investigators that perhaps 50 short-term Aboriginal fatalities resulted.

In addition to those who died, many others were exposed to harmful levels of radiation. The long-term health effects on these individuals have never been charted — but anecdotal reports of high cancer rates and horrendous birth defects in isolated “downwinder” communities have circulated.

At the time of the tests, it was well known by authorities that communities of Aboriginal people were close by. Yet the official attitude was that the concerns of a “handful of natives” could not be allowed to interfere with the “interests” of the British Commonwealth. Continue reading

July 2, 2013 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, health, indigenous issues | Leave a comment

Radiation exposure to workers at Hanford

radiation-warningWorkers at U.S. nuclear site exposed — Levels “well above threshold for a High Contamination Area” #Hanford http://enenews.com/workers-at-u-s-nuclear-site-exposed-levels-well-above-threshold-for-a-high-contamination-area-hanford
Title: PNNL staffers exposed to radioactive tritium in Richland
Source: The Bellingham Herald
Author: Annette Cary
Date: June 27, 2013

Two Pacific Northwest National Laboratory employees inhaled small amounts of radioactive tritium while doing work in the Hanford 300 Area last month. […]

Tritium inadvertently spread outside the fume hood, including along the routes to radiological trash disposal.

“Contamination levels on the floor immediately adjacent to the fume hood were well above the threshold for a High Contamination Area,” according to the defense board staff report. […]

The event is still under investigation and it’s too soon to say if any changes will be made to laboratory procedures, [PNNL spokesman Greg Koller] said.
See also: TV: “It appears the worst case scenario has happened” at U.S. nuclear site — Most dangerous material on earth “out of control”? — A whopping 800,000 dpm measured outside tank (VIDEO) #Hanford

July 1, 2013 Posted by | employment, radiation, USA | Leave a comment

Radiation stored in forests of Chernobyl: the fire danger

text ionising27 Years Later, Radiation Still Hides Out in Chernobyl’s Trees (Fukushima’s Too) The April 26, 1986, meltdown of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power flag-UkrainePlant scattered radioactive material across 58,000 square miles of eastern Europe. In a ring 18 miles from the destroyed plant, authorities set up the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone—a place where no one is supposed to live (though of course some do.) Scientific American has the story of how, though the disaster took place decades ago, radiation persists in a huge area around the defunct power plant—ready to be re-released to the environment. http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/06/27-years-later-radiation-still-hides-out-in-chernobyls-trees-fukushimas-too/ 30 June 13

In the forests around Chernobyl, the trees have absorbed some of the radioactive fall-out. Washed from the air by the rain, radionuclides are taken up by trees and stored for long periods. The worry, says Scientific American, is that a forest fire could loose this radiation back to the environment.

For almost three decades the forests around the shuttered nuclear power plant have been absorbing contamination left from the 1986 reactor explosion. Now climate change and lack of management present a troubling predicament: If these forests burn, strontium 90, cesium 137, plutonium 238 and other radioactive elements would be released, according to an analysis of the human health impacts of wildfire in Chernobyl’s exclusion zone conducted by scientists in Germany, Scotland, Ukraine and the United States. Continue reading

July 1, 2013 Posted by | environment, radiation, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Hospitak sewage potentially a source of ionising radiation

text-radiationAnother Radiation Source To Consider: Hospital Sewage Forbes, Jeff McMahon, 30 June 13 Researchers found higher than expected levels of radioactive iodine at a Long Island sewer plant that receives effluent from the thyroid cancer treatment center at Stony Brook University, they report in the latest issue of Health Physics.

The research highlights the need for studies of wastewater treatment plants that receive effluent from thyroid cancer treatment facilities, say researchers Paula S. Rose and Lawrence R. Swanson of Stony Brook’s Marine Sciences Research Center.

“This study highlights that medical use can cause substantial fluctuations of I-131 in sewage sludge and the general need for more surveys of I-131 in municipal WCPCs (Wastewater Polution Control Plants),” they write in the August 2013 issue of Health Physics (subscription required).

Rose and Swanson found a concentration of radioactive iodine four times higher than previously published studies of the Stony Brook plant, and at levels that sometimes exceeded the federal dose limit for members of the public……. “Further evaluation of treatment plant worker dose at this plant has been recommended to the Suffolk County Sewer District based on the radiation doses presented here.”

The researchers studied three wastewater treatment plants on Long Island, but found the highest doses at Stony Brook, perhaps because a relatively small treatment plant there serves a regional thyroid cancer center. The Stony Brook Medical Center treats about 60 inpatient thyroid cancer patients per year.

Iodine-131 can be both a cause of thyroid cancer and a solution. Cancers can develop when the thyroid absorbs I-131 instead of stable iodine, and can be included in the cure after doctors remove the thyroid gland and use I-131 to destroy remaining cells. Patients dosed with I-131 become temporarily radioactive, as does their urine. ”Patient excreta” are exempt from regulation in the U.S., and are therefore released into sewer systems.

Iodine 131 has a half life of about eight days.

“Iodine-131 is readily measured in sewage sludge at the Stony Brook WPCP,” according to the study. “The primary source of this radionuclide is excreta from thyroid cancer inpatients treated at the Stony Brook University Medical Center. Frequent inpatient treatments, flow recycling, and sewage sludge removal practices cause 131I to remain in sewage sludge for at least 13 days after patients have left the hospital.” http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2013/06/30/another-radiation-source-to-consider-hospital-sewage/

July 1, 2013 Posted by | health, radiation | Leave a comment

Strange thyroid cysts in 30% of Fukushima children

Author-Fukushima-diaryFormer head doctor of National Cancer Center,”Thyroids of Fukushima children look like honeycomb from too much cysts” http://fukushima-diary.com/2013/06/former-head-doctor-of-national-cancer-centerthyroids-of-fukushima-children-look-like-honeycomb-from-too-much-cysts/  by Mochizuki on June 28th, 2013

On 3/10/2013, the former head doctor of National Cancer Center radiation diagnosis department, Matsue had a speech in Fukushima collaborative clinic. (There were some political opinions about this clinic but Fukushima Diary stays away from any kinds of the discussion, only focuses on the medical facts newly found.)

Dr. Matsue is the chief of this clinic. He stated thyroids of Fukushima children have countless numbers of cysts to look like honeycomb. <Translate>

(In the thyroid test of Fukushima children) Shockingly about 30% of the children have thyroid cysts. It was also 35% from Fukushima prefectural government’s test. Prefectural government’s test probably misses small cysts of 1~2mm because their test is too quick, but the cysts rate was almost the same. However, <Translate>

Countless numbers of small cysts were found in the thyroids of about half of those 30% children, which is not reported in the prefectural government’s test. I thought it was like “honeycomb”, I have never seen such a thing.

Recently, a clinic in Kobe tested the thyroid of the children who evacuated from Fukushima..

<Translate>

The doctor in Kobe also reported about the “honeycomb looking thyroids”. What the world is that ? It’s no less than the half of the thyroids. The half-life of I-131 is 8 days, but it’s not strange if it causes any thyroid abnormality. Rationally thinking, it has something to do with radiation. <Translate>

“Accumulated I-131 might have changed the structure of the thyroid.” http://togetter.com/li/481810?page=1

June 29, 2013 Posted by | Fukushima 2013, health, Japan | 1 Comment

Errors made by Japanese authorities in estimating Fukushima radiation exposure

Exposure data wrong for 16,000 in Fukushima KYODO HTTP://WWW.JAPANTIMES.CO.JP/NEWS/2013/06/26/NATIONAL/RADIATION-EXPOSURE-DATA-INACCURATE-FOR-16000-FUKUSHIMA-RESIDENTS/#.UC0KSDTWO6I JUN 26, 2013 FUKUSHIMA – Fukushima Prefecture and the National Institute of Radiological Sciences have said they erroneously estimated the radiation exposure of 16,118 people in a survey covering the first four months after the outbreak of the March 2011 disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

Among the roughly 420,000 people authorities have so far finished compiling data on, recalculations show 12,469 received higher doses and 3,649 lower doses than previously estimated.

The margins for revisions range from plus 0.4 millisievert to minus 0.2 millisievert. As a result of the revisions, it was learned that some people were exposed to more than 1 millisievert — the annual limit set by the government for ordinary citizens.

People polled were asked to answer in detail where they were between March 12 and July 11, 2011. Based on their whereabouts, the institute estimated their cumulative amount of external exposure by adding up daily radiation levels measured at their locations over the four months.

Used as reference were actual radiation readings at a number of monitoring posts in the prefecture as well as projections of the spread of radioactive substances by the SPEEDI computer simulation system.

But in some cases, the dates in the survey failed to match those in the reference data.

June 27, 2013 Posted by | Fukushima 2013, Japan, radiation | Leave a comment

.Radiation from nuclear tests

U.N. Downplays Health Effects of Nuclear Radiation, IPS, By George Gao, 26 June 13  UNITED NATIONS, –  Fukushima on the Hudson“…… During the Cold War, the Soviet Union conducted 456 nuclear tests at the Semipalatinsk test site in present day Kazakhstan.

“Based on information collected during the missions and subsequent research, there is sufficient evidence to indicate that most of the area has little or no residual radioactivity directly attributed to nuclear tests in Kazakhstan,”according to the IAEA. 

Mayak disaster

But the IAEA narrative differs from those who live around Semipalatinsk. According to the preparatory committee for theComprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO),”A number of genetic defects and illnesses in the region, ranging from cancers to impotency to birth defects and other deformities, have been attributed to nuclear testing.”

“There is even a museum of mutations at the regional medical institute in Semey, the largest city near the old nuclear testing site,” it noted.

“What radiation does – gamma, alpha or beta – is it either kills the cell or changes the biochemistry of the DNA molecule,” Caldicott, who has worked on nuclear issues for 43 years, explained. “One day [the cell] will start to divide by mitosis in an unregulated way, producing literally trillions and trillions of [mutated] cells, and that’s a cancer,” she said.

“You don’t know you’ve been exposed to radiation,” Caldicott pointed out. “You can’t taste or see radioactive elements in the food, and when the cancer develops, of course it doesn’t denote its origin.”…… http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/06/u-n-downplays-health-effects-of-nuclear-radiation

June 27, 2013 Posted by | environment, health, Russia | Leave a comment

People of Jadugoda, India, suffer effects of uranium mining

see-this.waySee the environmental and health damage at Jadugoda, India, in these photographs http://www.galli.in/2013/06/jadugoda-unumo-tene-ashish-birulee.html?utm_source=Galli+Magazine&utm_campaign=19921c605d-UA-24811720-1&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_810b488293-19921c605d-28734661

 

U.N. Downplays Health Effects of Nuclear Radiation, IPS, By George Gao, 26 June 13  UNITED NATIONS, –  “……..Radiation from uranium mining The IAEA promotes “safe, responsible development of uranium resources”, the raw materials used to fuel nuclear reactors and build nuclear bombs.

For Ashish Birulee, a Ho tribal resident of Jadugoda, India, safe uranium mining in his community is far from reality, and the health effects of radiation are as clear as the photographs he has taken to document them.

Birulee, a student and photojournalist, lives next to a tailings dam, filled with radioactive waste from a uranium purification plant operated by the Uranium Corporation of India.

“Lung cancer, skin cancer, tumours, congenital deformities, down syndrome, mental retardation, megacephaly, sterility, infertility in married couples, thalassemia [and] rare birth defects like Gastroschisis [are] common in the area,” he told IPS.

“We are like guinea pigs here,” he said, citing government negligence on the matter. “I’m experiencing everyday radiation exposure and also witnessing how my people are suffering.”…   http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/06/u-n-downplays-health-effects-of-nuclear-radiation/

 

June 27, 2013 Posted by | environment, health, India, Resources -audiovicual | Leave a comment

Radiation-caused deaths from Chernobyl nuclear accident

chernobylScientific American: Up to 1 million eventual deaths estimated from Chernobyl exposure — Sweden, Finland, others concerned about risk of forest fires near disaster area http://enenews.com/scientific-american-1-million-eventual-deaths-estimated-chernobyl-exposure-sweden-finland-other-european-countries-concerned-about-risk-forest-fires-disaster-area

Title: At Chernobyl, Radioactive Danger Lurks in the Trees
Source: Scientific American
Author:  Jane Braxton Little and The Daily Climate
text ionisingDate: June 24, 2013

At Chernobyl, Radioactive Danger Lurks in the Trees

For 26 years, forests around Chernobyl have been absorbing radioactive elements but a fire would send them skyward again – a concern as summers grow longer, hotter and drier […]

[…] scientists at several institutions in Europe and North America analyzed a worst-case scenario: A very hot fire that burns for five days, consumes everything in its path, and sends the smoke 60 miles south to Kiev. A separate worst-case study is underway looking at the risks for Sweden, Finland and other European countries heavily impacted by the 1986 explosion.

Women in their 20s living just outside the zone face the highest risk from exposure to radioactive smoke, the 2011 study found: 170 in 100,000 would have an increased chance of dying of cancer. Among men farther away in Kiev, 18 in 100,000 20-year-olds would be at increased risk of dying of cancer. [No mention of those under 20, who are at much greater risk] These estimates pale in comparison to those from the 1986 Chernobyl explosion, which predict between 4,000 and over a million eventual deaths from radiation exposure. […]
See also: 3 million children require treatment because of Chernobyl, many will die prematurely -U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan in 2000

June 26, 2013 Posted by | EUROPE, health, radiation | Leave a comment

Radiation death ray plot to kill President Obama

text-radiationObama is death ray target of Ku Klux Klan nut http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4978215/Obama-target-of-KKK-nuts-radiation-weapon.html#ixzz2XAvBNDjL By PETE SAMSON, US Editor 21st June 2013 TWO men have been arrested over a plot to kill US President Barack Obama with a home-made DEATH RAY.
Fanatics Glendon Scott Crawford, 49, and Eric Feight, 54, were nicked after a six-month FBI undercover operation. Mr Obama was among those said to have been targeted by the futuristic device that would have fired lethal doses of radiation.

Engineer Crawford, a member of the white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan, told undercover agents his design was “Hiroshima on a light switch”. He said his plan was to hide the death ray inside a van and park it
near to a target. The device would be activated from a safe distance and according to an
arrest affidavit would “kill human targets silently and from a distance with lethal doses of radiation”.

He said whoever had the device could kill with little chance of being caught, according to the criminal complaint.
Crawford, of Schenectady, New York, said President Obama was on their hit-list because he had let Muslims into the US.

On the day after the Boston Marathon bombing in April he allegedly sent a text message saying: “Obama’s policies caused this.” The two men were investigated after trying to get funding for their plan. Last year Crawford walked into a synagogue and allegedly inquired about technology that could kill “Israel’s enemies while they slept”.

He later asked KKK leaders in North Carolina for money for his machine. Both the KKK and Jewish leaders tipped off the FBI.
Crawford was arrested as he tried to connect a remote activation device to an X-ray machine that undercover agents had given him after making it useless.
Prosecutor John Duncan said: “From our investigation, the device would have been able to emit X-ray radiation that would cause death.”

June 24, 2013 Posted by | incidents, radiation, USA | Leave a comment

Shocking new study shows damage from radiation more damaging than at first thought! – Prof.Chris Busby

….This density of events occurring at low doses suggests a mechanism to explain experimental results that show Tritium is a greater mutagenic hazard than ICRP would expect….

Posted by nuclear-news.net

By Arclight2011Part2

20th June 2011

H/t Richard Bramhall ( http://www.llrc.org )

A new review shows the conventional radiation risk model cannot be used to predict health effects of radioactivity inside the body.

On May 22 2013 InTech (http://www.intechopen.com) published a review of evidence that DNA damage caused by inhaling and ingesting man-made radioactivity is having serious health effects. This is the first time such a wide-ranging review of the genetic mechanisms of harm from nuclear discharges has been published in the scientific literature.

The review, by Professor Chris Busby, is entitled “Aspects of DNA damage from internal radiation exposures

[1]. It is in a book called “New Research Directions in DNA Repair”.

[2] It vindicates the belief that incorporated (internal) radioactivity is more dangerous than predicted by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP). Much of the information reviewed has been in the literature for decades but has been sidelined or ignored.

The evidence shows that ICRP’s use of “absorbed dose” is invalid for many radionuclides when they are internal. “Absorbed dose” is based on an external irradiation paradigm and therefore averages the energy of radioactive decays across large volumes of body tissue.

By contrast, some forms of radioactivity expose DNA to high densities of ionisation. The review defines and discusses situations where genetic damage is massively more likely than from external radiation at the same “dose”;

1) biochemical affinity for DNA,

2) transmutation,

3) hot particles,

4) sequential emitters (“Second Event Theory”),

5) low energy beta emitters, and 6) the “Secondary Photoelectron Effect”:

  1. Some substances (for example Strontium-90 and Uranium) have high biochemical affinity for DNA so a large proportion of what is inside the body will be chemically bound to DNA. For this reason the radiation events associated with them are massively more likely to damage DNA structures than the same dose delivered externally.
  2. Transmutation, where the radioactive decay of a radio-element changes it into a different element (e.g. Carbon-14 changing to Nitrogen), has mutagenic effects far greater than would be expected on the basis of “absorbed dose”. This has been known since the 1960s but it has been ignored by risk agencies such as ICRP, UNSCEAR and BEIR.
  3. Hot particles, especially those which emit very short-range alpha radiation, have obvious implications for high local doses to tissue where they are embedded.

Image

  1. The “Second Event Theory” concerns the decay sequences of some radionuclides which decay to a short-lived daughter. Strontium 90 decaying to Yttrium 90 is an example; the Yttrium 90 has a half-life of 2½ days so the theory is that the first event (decay of Strontium 90) may damage a cell’s DNA which then sets about repairing itself. The repair process is known to be very radiosensitive and there is a finite probability that the second event (the subsequent Yttrium decay) inflicts further damage which cannot be repaired.

Continue reading

June 20, 2013 Posted by | 2 WORLD, radiation, Reference | 5 Comments

Cancer cluster near uranium site in Albuquerque

Residents blame cancers on uranium site 
http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/environment/residents-blame-cancers-on-uranium-site
 19 Jun 2013,  Elizabeth Alvarez  ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) – Residents near Milan say there’s been a cluster of cancer cases, and they’re blaming an abandoned uranium mill.

The Albuquerque Journal reports residents in the community west of Grants say action is needed immediately. They’re demanding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency either move the waste from the abandon mill or relocate the owners of about 75 nearby homes.It’s been more than a decade since uranium ore was mined in New Mexico, but two foreign companies are looking to re-open another one this year near Grants.

June 20, 2013 Posted by | health, Uranium, USA | Leave a comment

Hydraulic fracking causing radiation problem in water

water-radiationReport says drilling is creating radiation problems in Ohio Ohio,com.By BOB DOWNING  June 14, 2013  The FreshWater Accountability Project Ohio (www.FWAPOH.com) today released a report on the presence and dangers of radiation present throughout the horizontal hydraulic fracturing (fracking) industry that is extracting minerals in Ohio.

The report, authored by Dr. Marvin Resnikoff, a longtime expert on radioactive waste management and since 1992, on radiation hazards from oil and gas drilling, details the serious problem associated with bringing up long-buried radium and other naturally-occurring hazards from thousands of feet underground.

The radiation is associated directly with the “hottest” areas of gas and oil productivity in deep shale layers and is an inevitable and burgeoning waste problem.

Resnikoff points out that much of the highly-radioactive solids such as rocks and soils pulled up during drilling, and contaminated muds and sands are cheaply disposed of in municipal landfills in Ohio, irrespective of actual radioactivity content, for 1/100th of the cost of disposal of comparable low-level radioactive waste from nuclear weapons and nuclear power generation in the nation’s three facilities for that purpose.

n Ohio, he stated, “It is evident that environmental concerns are trumped by the economics beneficial to the unconventional shale drilling industry.” Similarly, Dr. Resnikoff identified evidence that the Patriot water treatment facility in Warren, Ohio, which delivers pretreated water to the Warren public water treatment plant, is likely sending radium-laden water into the Mahoning River watershed. “On a daily basis, Patriot does not test for gamma emitting radionuclides and for radium-226,” he observed.

The expert also performed calculations showing that transport of radioactive liquid waste by tank truck greatly exceed federal thresholds which require specific tank design, minimum insurance under federal regulations of $5 million per shipment, and signage to be prominently located which identify the load as radioactive material.

The report notes that all three sets of federal regulations are being routinely violated which means State of Ohio regulations are clearly inadequate for this hazardous material, and possibly illegal…… http://www.ohio.com/blogs/drilling/ohio-utica-shale-1.291290/report-says-drilling-is-creating-radiation-problems-in-ohio-1.405891

June 15, 2013 Posted by | environment, radiation, Reference, USA | Leave a comment

Four types of radioactive isotopes emitted during a nuclear accident

text-radiationHow Does Radiation Affect the Body? Big Think, by MICHIO KAKU APRIL 16, 2011, “……Four different types of radiation are emitted during a nuclear accident like the Fukushima meltdown: iodine, cesium, strontium, and potassium. Physicist Michio Kaku, spoke with Big Think this week about these different types of radiation and the effect each one has on the human body. Like Chernobyl, he said, the main problem has been radioactive iodine: “That’s why people have been taking potassium iodide pills—to flood the thyroid glands.” But potassium
iodide pills are not “radiation pills,” he added. They protect against just one byproduct—iodine 131—not against cesium, strontium, or the extremely dangerous plutonium.

body-rad

Below are these four different radioactive isotopes, their half-lives, and the types of cancer with which they are most often associated. Continue reading

June 14, 2013 Posted by | 2 WORLD, health, radiation, Reference | Leave a comment