"Rich Grise" wrote in message
...
John R. Carroll wrote:
Rich Grise wrote:
Martin Eastburn wrote:

I expect detectors will pick up radiation of one sort or another
sometime this week on the west coast.

Which will probably be about as much over background as you get in an
airplane at 35,000 feet, or a chest X-ray.

They were already reporting over 1000 times the normal background this
morning.

Yeah - about as much as in an airplane at 35,000 feet, or a chest x-ray.

Cheers!
Rich


Rich,

1000 times backround (which is being measured at the Japanese plant not on
the west coast) is nothing to scoff at, and it is not to same as one chest
X-ray or long flight.

We receive about 0.8 to 1 millirem per day of background, so 1000 times
this would be 800 to 1000 millirems per day. A chest X-ray is about 8
millirems, so this would be equivalent to 100 to 125 chest X rays every
single day! Actuarial tables say that 1000 millirems takes 51 days off your
life.

But the radiation you receive from external sources is not even the most
worrying thing. If you breathe in a particle of radioactive material and it
lodges in your lung, the constant intense bombardment of adjacent cells
means a greatly increased risk of cancer in that area.