We should start a blacklist of products that could contain ingredients from the affected areas.
For example fruits like apples, pears, etc.
Instead of blanket banning everything in a frenzy of uninformed fear, why not just actually rely on radioactivity testing?
Gtet yourself a Geiger counter if you’re concerned.
But be aware that flying out of Taiwan may well give you the same dose of radiation that eating food from Japan (if indeed Taiwan does import any that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg) will.
‘Fuji’ apples in Taiwan do not come from Japan, they are from NZ, California … I don’t think there is a lot of import from that area in Japan. BTW, harvest of apples and pears is still 4-5 months away.
We figured that already last year after letting like 20 of them almost get rotten.
[quote=“urodacus”]Instead of blanket banning everything in a frenzy of uninformed fear, why not just actually rely on radioactivity testing?
Gtet yourself a Geiger counter if you’re concerned. .[/quote]
The basic Geiger counters are far to insensitive for detecting contamination.
Sorry to inform the uninformed, eating radioactive isotopes and being exposed to radiation are not the same thing.
My worries are that Taiwanese crops can archive good prices in Japan while affected crops might be too cheap to resist.
Importing!
Hey, I didn’t post this!
[quote=“Belgian Pie”]
Hey, I didn’t post this![/quote]
Sorry I got screwed up with the quotes
Dunno about that. I ordered a couple of gamma-detector tubes from eBay a few weeks ago, just for a laugh. I can get a nice background count (~20 events/min) out of them, so I assume contamination would register just fine. The longer you count, the more accurate the reading.
It would be interesting to test local produce and compare (that’s what I bought the tubes for, but I never got around to it). I vaguely remember reading that certain plants (eggplants or something) are naturally a bit radioactive because the plant has a preference for some certain micronutrient which has a radioactive isotope.
Dunno about that. I ordered a couple of gamma-detector tubes from eBay a few weeks ago, just for a laugh. I can get a nice background count (~20 events/min) out of them, so I assume contamination would register just fine. The longer you count, the more accurate the reading.
It would be interesting to test local produce and compare (that’s what I bought the tubes for, but I never got around to it). I vaguely remember reading that certain plants (eggplants or something) are naturally a bit radioactive because the plant has a preference for some certain micronutrient which has a radioactive isotope.[/quote]
I think it’s bananas because they contain so much potassium.
All fruit and vegetables are naturally radioactive, because everything is made of atoms that exist in a variety of forms, some of which are unstable and decay (that’s what radioactivity is).
The detail is in the amount of unstable isotopes in any particular thing. Different elements also have varying isotope ratios, and the stability of all those different isotopes varies too, so some fruits are mode naturally radioactive than others if they have more potassium, for example (as mentioned above).
And yes, a geiger counter measures radiation released by radioactive decay (it doesn’t come from anywhere else). So it will detect a few events per minute in everything, and more than that if there is a particularly ‘hot’ piece of dust from a nuclear leak in a piece of fruit. Hot meaning a piece with enriched numbers of unstable isotopes.
Radiation from plane travel and radiation from point sources of isotope decay are essentially the same. The damage to your body comes from high energy ray (gamma ray) or particle (alpha particles, essentially helium nuclei, or beta particles, essentially an electron and an anti-electron neutrino pair) collisions with your DNA. Cesium 137 decays by a combination of beta decay and gamma decay into Barium 137. Ingest a piece of hot cesium and you just put the emitter of rays inside your body rather than outside (in a star or the sun) but the effect is identical.
How do you think we get nuclear fission, anyway? We use physical processes to separate the unstable isotopes out of existing rocks and put them all in one lump. We don’t manufacture anything new, although the result of cracking uranium pieces together does create new hot cesium and strontium at the expense of losing uranium atoms.
Dunno about that. I ordered a couple of gamma-detector tubes from eBay a few weeks ago, just for a laugh. I can get a nice background count (~20 events/min) out of them, so I assume contamination would register just fine. The longer you count, the more accurate the reading.
It would be interesting to test local produce and compare (that’s what I bought the tubes for, but I never got around to it). I vaguely remember reading that certain plants (eggplants or something) are naturally a bit radioactive because the plant has a preference for some certain micronutrient which has a radioactive isotope.[/quote]
I just stumbled across this video.
I think it clears up the question about the Geiger counters’ accuracies regarding food contamination.
Different forms of radiation decay become important in the context of ingestion, though, because of the special destructive potential of unshielded alphas and betas. The specific half-life of the isotope becomes relevant in this situation as well.
Plus, radiation from plane travel is a fleeting phenomenon-- return to the ground, and the combo of increased distance and increased shielding from the relatively thick layer of atmosphere saves you. Ingest something, and you’re stuck with it until it decays or you pee, poop, sweat, bleed, or breath it out.
Let’s pick an extreme example. Plutonium-239, an alpha-emitter, is safely contained in a simple box, and you can handle it with gloves. A mere piece of paper is sufficient to stop an alpha particle. Big clunky alpha particles – a combo of 2 protons and 2 neutrons, helium, as you said – are super-easy to stop dead in their tracks. No lead apron necessary!
But INHALE plutonium dust, or INGEST it somehow, and those little alphas will wreak havoc inside you for a while, because the half-life is thousands of years and the body doesn’t excrete plutonium particularly efficiently.
The I-131 from Fukushima has a half life of 1 week or so, and emits betas and gammas. Let’s just forget about the I-131 because the incident was over a year ago. That exposure is said and done. The cesium-137 is also a beta and gamma emitter, but has a much longer half life, many years. The gammas are what matter most when the cesium is outside of you. Beta particles are tinier and more penetrating than alphas, but still can be stopped with a decent wall, a few layers of aluminum foil, etc. Gammas need lead or super-thick concrete walls to block 'em. But when radiation is outside of you, the “inverse square” law applies, meaning that the further you are from the source, the dose drops EXPONENTIALLY. i.e., Distance^-2.
But inside of you, the betas from cesium would be relevant. Your body tissues would be on the receiving end of those nasty beta absorptions. No shielding for your poor innards! And the inverse square law absolutely does not save you from either the betas or gammas, because the location of you and the radiation source overlaps! The only help would be from your body’s own ability to get rid of the cesium by excreting it somehow. Perhaps hamletintaiwan can enjoy his fruit with a chaser of laxatives, or not wash it in the hopes of inducing “laduzi.” 
So I would say that in practice, it does make a difference whether the source is inside or outside of you. In principle, totally the same stuff, and really the dose to the individual is what matters in the end. But I would not particularly want to ingest a beta-emitter knowingly if I could help it.
I think Saul Bellow said it best: “More die of heartbreak”.
“Up and at them.”
“NO! up and ATOM!”
“Up and at them!”
“Up and ATOM!”
“Up and at them!”
“Argh!!!”
I just came across this statistics for thyroid cancer incidences.
It’s starting from 1986 the year of Chernobyl.
http://www.statistik.at/web_de/statistiken/gesundheit/krebserkrankungen/schilddruese/index.html
On a positive note, the mortality rate has dropped despite the doubling of thyroid cancer incidences.
Well, yes, we need a good Summer Spook. What with people getting relaxed and not seeing death around every corner.
Yes, and making big $$$ working for the Atom lobby, or, are you doing this for free?
Yes, and making big $$$ working for the Atom lobby, or, are you doing this for free?[/quote]
I get 100USD for every post like that one on a online forum, of course. Why do you even ask?
Seriously though, scaring people for little to no reason is not the way to go. Get a counter and inspect your food if you really think it might contain trace radiation. Believe it or not, that is exactly what I did during the Fukushima accident (I borrowed a Geiger counter from Academia Sinica). The most radioactive thing I found was a bag of cat litter in a supermarket.
I couldn’t agree more. So when do you think the nuke people are going to stop trying to scare us?
1989 ad:
1987 ad, at 1:00:
Shame I couldn’t find the one from the 1970s. That “When you consider the alternative” line was a classic!
Guys, guys let’s not try and turn this into a “Pro Nuke / Anti Nukes” debate. It’s not what the OP was about and it is not my intention to defend the indefensible, nor do I have time to engage in such discussion.
My point is that waving the scare of poisoned food from Fukushima is not going to help things in the least, no matter what side of the fence you are. If one is concerned about food safety here and now, I believe there are both systems in place to prevent irradiated food fr reaching our table and methods to double-check one’s groceries.
I apologize for the tone of my first post “a la Fref Smith”, so to say.
[quote=“Novaspes”] I believe there are both systems in place to prevent irradiated food fr reaching our table and methods to double-check one’s groceries.
[/quote]
Sorry, but :roflmao:
Edit:
Most vegetables are irradiated nowadays to make them last longer.
I am talking about contamination.