More Radiation Exposure Effects

[damn name]

We've all seen plenty of charts over the last three months describing the effects from radiation exposure. Little has been written about the effects of exposure to the radiation of stupidity.

The unit of measure for stupidity radiation is the "baka."

100 micro-bakas/hr is the maximum safe level for babies. One milli-baka is 1,000 micro-bakas and 1,000 milli-bakas is 1 baka.

One baka can cause permanent injury, 2 bakas of exposure may be fatal for weak people.

Background baka is about 0.04 mbk/hr from things like people riding a bicycle while talking on their ketai as they run into a railing, mothers talking on their ketai as their child runs into the street, store clerks asking if your order of five dozen donuts is to go or to eat in... things like that.

Business meetings can elevate the baka radiation to triple the background baka radiation. "Oh my God! We're registering 0.12 mbk/hr!"

Your exposure to baka radiation can depend on where you live, and also your job. General office workers suffer from high baka radiation and the cumulative amount absorbed is what you should keep track of. A sudden burst of stupidity from a manager is less dangerous than long, continuous exposure to idiot coworkers.

People working in customer service have one of the highest exposure rates to baka radiation, with some easily reaching the yearly maximum recommended amount of 100 milli-bakas (100 mbk) in just one week.

People should be careful about overexposure if they need to visit a government office - city offices, drivers license offices, immigration or embassies. Visiting more than one government office per week can be harmful and require months of detoxification before the baka radiation leaches from your system.

Not all baka radiation is the same. Politicians can excrete a highly toxic, concentrated beam of baka, called a "Baka Ray," which can render humans and animals dumbfounded. Extended exposure to Baka Rays from politicians causes irreversible idiot-like behavior in otherwise healthy people. Direct exposure to campaign speeches should be avoided. There is no cure for baka sickness caused by overexposure to political rhetoric. Victims become lifeless carcasses, wandering through life spouting slogans and nonsense on TV. Baka Ray exposure can mimic Alzheimer's Syndrome.

Small overexposure to non-political baka radiation can usually be treated by specialists, such as bartenders.

People can usually sense increased baka radiation in their surroundings. When you feel a slight dizziness from baka radiation above background level, take early precautions by covering your eyes or ears. Do not look directly into the eyes of a baka-emitting person. If it's possible, exit the vicinity immediately and take cover in a nearby tavern.

If you're in a meeting with a customer or your boss, you can try to excuse yourself by saying that you're feeling ill because you stayed up all night preparing for the meeting, then apologize profusely as you run to the bathroom. Sprinkle cold water on your face, take a few deep breaths, and you should be able to withstand about fifteen more minutes of baka radiation in the meeting.

Remember, baka radiation can be harmful, so limit your exposure as much as possible. The more you're exposed to baka radiation, the more likely it will be that you'll lose patience with the baka-filled world as you grow older.

[Taro Toporific]

...
The unit of measure for stupidity radiation is the "baka."
100 micro-bakas/hr is the maximum safe level for babies. One milli-baka is 1,000 micro-bakas and 1,000 milli-bakas is 1 baka....

Japan's nuclear meltdown linked to baby deaths along West coast
huliq.com, June 2, 2011
"Eight cities in the Pacific Northwest are experiencing a dramatic increase in baby deaths since the Japanese nuclear disaster despite media reports that the fallout is 'negligible' in the U.S. mainland," states the Eugene Weekly in a June 16 report that's tied to statistics based from federal agencies and the National Center for Health Statistics. There's been "an increase of about 35 percent in deaths of babies under 1 year old in Boise, Seattle, Portland and the northern California cities of Santa Cruz, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose and Berkeley," states a June 16 Eugene Weekly report. Also, the baby deaths in these combined cities "average 9.25 per week in the month before the Fukushima meltdown. And, 12.5 per week in the months following the disaster."More...

[Mike Oxlong]

Sounds like what I read on Al Jazeera the other day...

In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant.

The eight cities included in the report are San Jose, Berkeley, San Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Portland, Seattle, and Boise, and the time frame of the report included the ten weeks immediately following the disaster.

"There is and should be concern about younger people being exposed, and the Japanese government will be giving out radiation monitors to children," Dr MV Ramana, a physicist with the Programme on Science and Global Security at Princeton University who specialises in issues of nuclear safety, told Al Jazeera.

Dr Ramana explained that he believes the primary radiation threat continues to be mostly for residents living within 50km of the plant, but added: "There are going to be areas outside of the Japanese government's 20km mandatory evacuation zone where radiation is higher. So that could mean evacuation zones in those areas as well."

Gundersen points out that far more radiation has been released than has been reported.

"They recalculated the amount of radiation released, but the news is really not talking about this," he said. "The new calculations show that within the first week of the accident, they released 2.3 times as much radiation as they thought they released in the first 80 days."

According to Gundersen, the exposed reactors and fuel cores are continuing to release microns of caesium, strontium, and plutonium isotopes. These are referred to as "hot particles".

"We are discovering hot particles everywhere in Japan, even in Tokyo," he said. "Scientists are finding these everywhere. Over the last 90 days these hot particles have continued to fall and are being deposited in high concentrations. A lot of people are picking these up in car engine air filters."

Radioactive air filters from cars in Fukushima prefecture and Tokyo are now common, and Gundersen says his sources are finding radioactive air filters in the greater Seattle area of the US as well.

The hot particles on them can eventually lead to cancer.

"These get stuck in your lungs or GI tract, and they are a constant irritant," he explained, "One cigarette doesn't get you, but over time they do. These [hot particles] can cause cancer, but you can't measure them with a Geiger counter. Clearly people in Fukushima prefecture have breathed in a large amount of these particles. Clearly the upper West Coast of the US has people being affected. That area got hit pretty heavy in April."

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/201161664828302638.html

[Yokohammer]

Sounds like what I read on Al Jazeera the other day...
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/201161664828302638.html

Our old friend Arnie Gundersen center stage again. This guy is really distributing the panic wide and far.

[omae mona]

This baby death thing is the bullshit statistic of the week. The city surveyed has a weekly average of 9 deaths, and it went up to 12 recently. I will skip the mathematical discussion of why a few months of over-average rates is not only likely at one point, purely based on chance, but it's going to be really easy to find if you call a few local governments and cherry pick results.

But even setting aside the bullshit statistics, cities don't register deaths without listing the cause of death. Does anybody think they just say "oops, another dead one. Throw it in the bin. Wonder what killed it. Probably radiation."? Why is the author of the study using statistics to imply some causality when there is a far more simple analysis: how many of the babies actually died from radiation? This info is on file. If the babies died from accidents, infections, abuse, etc., why would anybody think the Japan radiation is the cause? There's only one reason the authors decided to publish a meaningless statistical figure instead of telling us specifically how many children died from radiation, and that's because the answer is obviously zero, which doesn't fit the author's agenda.

Was anybody actually fooled by this?

Our old friend Arnie Gundersen center stage again. This guy is really distributing the panic wide and far.

His credentials are completely bunk, too. He has 1 year of experience actually helping operate a power plant in the early 70s. He is a math teacher now.

[Catoneinutica]

Ol' Uncle Arnie sure gets a lot of airtime on slightly dubious news outlets like al-Jazeera and RT. For info less saturated with no-nuke didacticism, there's this site (as I'm sure many of you guys know):

http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/

It's for me the go-to site for news of the radiological. He's got a great post on buffoon extraordinaire Shunichi Yamashita:

http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2011/06/dr-shunichi-yamashita-radiation-advisor.html

[Coligny]

His credentials are completely bunk, too. He has 1 year of experience actually helping operate a power plant in the early 70s. He is a math teacher now.

While I cannot express objectively any kind of opinion on the guy...

I've seen 20 times more critics against his credentials rather than against his statements...

[Jack]

Japan's nuclear meltdown linked to baby deaths along West coast
huliq.com, June 2, 2011
"Eight cities in the Pacific Northwest are experiencing a dramatic increase in baby deaths since the Japanese nuclear disaster despite media reports that the fallout is 'negligible' in the U.S. mainland," states the Eugene Weekly in a June 16 report that's tied to statistics based from federal agencies and the National Center for Health Statistics. There's been "an increase of about 35 percent in deaths of babies under 1 year old in Boise, Seattle, Portland and the northern California cities of Santa Cruz, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose and Berkeley," states a June 16 Eugene Weekly report. Also, the baby deaths in these combined cities "average 9.25 per week in the month before the Fukushima meltdown. And, 12.5 per week in the months following the disaster."More...

Is there mo limit to how much stupidity is tolerated in the U.S.? I think the increase in baby deaths is due to dog poo eaten up by ants and cross contaminated lettuce by black flies that have a contact with the said ants.

[Typhoon]

Japan's nuclear meltdown linked to baby deaths along West coast
huliq.com, June 2, 2011
"Eight cities in the Pacific Northwest are experiencing a dramatic increase in baby deaths since the Japanese nuclear disaster despite media reports that the fallout is 'negligible' in the U.S. mainland," states the Eugene Weekly in a June 16 report that's tied to statistics based from federal agencies and the National Center for Health Statistics. There's been "an increase of about 35 percent in deaths of babies under 1 year old in Boise, Seattle, Portland and the northern California cities of Santa Cruz, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose and Berkeley," states a June 16 Eugene Weekly report. Also, the baby deaths in these combined cities "average 9.25 per week in the month before the Fukushima meltdown. And, 12.5 per week in the months following the disaster."More...

This sends the baka counter off the scale and to the moon:

1. Correlation is not causation.

2. No attempt is made to rule out other causes.

3. The levels of radiation in the US due to Fukushima Daiichi are orders of magnitude lower than natural background radiation.

[omae mona]

While I cannot express objectively any kind of opinion on the guy...

I've seen 20 times more critics against his credentials rather than against his statements...

A fair point. Just because he has lied and exaggerated his professional qualifications does not necessarily mean his science is also lies and exaggerations. So I will address a few things he said above. He very carefully avoids using facts except when they can be used to create innuendo. Undoubtedly there actually are radioactive particles spread to many places. But by using terms like "high concentrations", "lots of people" and "affected", without giving a single measurement or scientific observation, he's just creating wiggle room so nobody can absolutely say he was technically lying when it's blatantly obvious (based on measurements from actual scientists) that nobody is going to get cancer, which is what he is trying to make you think.

And taken right out of the UFO conspiracist playbook, he's created circular logic that's impossible to disprove because he apparenty has discovered magic undetectable radiation that's making everybody sick. Since nobody can measure it, nobody can say it's not there.

[Typhoon]

His [AG] credentials are completely bunk, too. He has 1 year of experience actually helping operate a power plant in the early 70s. He is a math teacher now.

A research reactor that did not produce power.

[Typhoon]

[FG Lurker]

We've all seen plenty of charts over the last three months describing the effects from radiation exposure. Little has been written about the effects of exposure to the radiation of stupidity.

The unit of measure for stupidity radiation is the "baka."

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to damn name again."

Much laughter was produced, thanks for the awesome post!

[Typhoon]

:rofl:

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to damn name again."

Much laughter was produced, thanks for the awesome post!

Seconded. Brilliant.

[Coligny]

Lets assume, purely for the sake of argument, that Gundersen's "five to ten hot particles" is accurate.
It's not going to make a difference.
Most people in the US breath in far more, by many multiples of 10, naturally occurring radioactive radon in their homes.
Most radioisotopes of radon emit alpha particles when they decay - absorbed by lung tissue.
At a sufficiently high dose said to be the 2nd leading cause of lung cancer in the US, after smoking.

From what I heard aboot hot particles (wayyyy before Fukushima) in a documentary called the Battle of Chernobyl, was that they were highly dangerous dusts able to kill in few days. It was observed from the sudden death of some minor digging under the reactor to avoid a china syndrome and try to establish a (cancelled) cooling installation. Some of them were removing their breathing filter that were to easily clogged by dust. Some ingested "hot" dust and quickly died.

So here for me, the problem of reliability come from the statement that these hot particles travelled quite far. Because as far as their lethality, I'm pretty much convinced...

Said Hot particles are one of the big reason why Tchernobyl needs a sarcophagus. Preferably air and water tight...

[Typhoon]

From what I heard aboot hot particles (wayyyy before Fukushima) in a documentary called the Battle of Chernobyl, was that they were highly dangerous dusts able to kill in few days. It was observed from the sudden death of some minor digging under the reactor to avoid a china syndrome and try to establish a (cancelled) cooling installation. Some of them were removing their breathing filter that were to easily clogged by dust. Some ingested "hot" dust and quickly died.

So here for me, the problem of reliability come from the statement that these hot particles travelled quite far. Because as far as their lethality, I'm pretty much convinced...

Said Hot particles are one of the big reason why Tchernobyl needs a sarcophagus. Preferably air and water tight...

There is three types of radiation: http://goo.gl/HVyGr

Numbers matter.

[nottu]

[Coligny]

There is three types of radiation: http://goo.gl/HVyGr

Numbers matter.

And have little link with my statement...

[Typhoon]

And have little link with my statement...

The number of radioactive "hot" particles inhaled is what counts.

Numeracy also matters.

[Bucky]

[Kuang_Grade]

One should also be wary of those trumping changes based on absolute numbers as a result of events that are not consistent over time. The number of dead infants would increase if the number of births increases with no actual change in the mortality rate, and there is seasonality in US birth rates (in the US, more children are born in the summer months). Using this kind of approach, there is likely an "alarming" rise in the number of infants dying at birth every summer in the US.