Good news is nice, but bad news sells papers.

  There have been many more announcement about Japanese workers being exposed to radioactive water, radiation inhalations, food bans and radiation levels 1000 times above normal. I ask you to think and take into consideration the information in this post. More often than not, the stories that you are hearing are indeed reporting the facts, but since so little is understood by the reporters and those who hear the reports, these facts sound more scary than they should. Take heart in knowing that the amount of radiation that an average person is exposed to in one year is 50 times less than the maximum allowable dose for radiation workers. This in turn is only ½ of the lowest dose of radiation proven to statistically increase the probability of getting cancer.


   Some of you have probably fixated on the 1000 times above normal bit. This number may sound scary until you take into account that this figure is a time based figure. Let us do an example taking information from the above chart. The maximum dose of radiation one can receive as a member of the public in the US is 1000 MicroSieverts per year(ignore the units for now). Please note the time dependence. So, a radiation level 1000 times above normal means that a person could receive the maximum allowable yearly public doseage in just under 9 hours. This level would also expose a person the minimum dosage proven to statisitcly increase the probability of cancer in 900 hours (just over 1 month).


  One last thing, I found a very useful chart that puts the whole radiation exposure thing into perspective, I have attached a link to the site that has it. This chart is from WBUR in Boston, created by a cartoonist with a physics background.


  I hope this helps with everyone's understanding, and I apologize for those of you who already had this conversation with me. Please, if you have any questions or concerns, or want to discuss it further, email or tweet me @FrozenLaser.