Coming up: Saliva causes cancer, film at 11....

The last time I went all number-crunchy on you, it was in response to the hyper-sensationalized media warnings of nuclear fallout from Fukushima, specifically in reference to dosage and radioactive iodine, NOAA Studies now show that radiation levels are well below the danger levels, even in fish swimming in contaminated water. Go Figure . We're going that route again, though on a slightly different subject, and now:

Everybody FREAK OUT!!! at least that's what the people in California and at NIH want you to do. They have found that a key ingredient in Coke and Pepsi causes CANCER!!  

OK, now that I have your attention, lets dissect this headline a little. I heard this little tidbit while I was dutifully watching C-Span like every responsible citizen should (OK, so I'm a nerd, you did read the title of this blog right?) and there was a meeting of the Society for the Promotion of Women in Politics or something and one of them mentioned that regular people can have power too, just look at what the people were able to do concerning the cancer causing agents in Coke!

Now, this is of no small amount of concern to me since I usually have 1 coke per day, and I savor that moment. If my favorite carbonated beverage is causing cancer, I'm going to be a little put out. So I went and checked it out. I looked at the actual NIH Study and did some number crunching (this is the math part). Given certain facts like:
A. The cancer causing agent is in the caramel coloring (its called 4-Methylimidazole or 4-MEI)
B. There are about 130 micro-grams in each can (roughly the equivalent of a single grain of salt in your salt shaker)
C. The amount of 4-MEI given to test rats is ....large
D. Using their own dose numbers (30, 55 and 115 mg/kg per day), we can calculate that the average human (5' 8", 175 lbs.) would have to consume  levels of 2.4, 4.4, and 12.3g of raw chemical, per day.
E. That amount of raw chemical is enough to color between 18,400 and 95,000 cans of coke PER DAY. 

These numbers are shown not to cause cancer in laboratory test subjects (rats and mice). It not until we reach the extremely high dosage level of 24.6g/day (190,000 cans of coke) does the evidence of cancer shows up. Now, I like Coke, but I think that it is not physically possible for one to consume 190,000 cans of coke in a day, anyone?

Who would have guessed?

Apparently Peter Gabriel is a closet nerd. Two weekends ago The Boss went to a Peter Gabriel concert which was good according to him. But, the best part of the concert was not the music, the best part was a plug that Mr. Gabriel put in for something that is quite near and dear to the heart of The Boss and the soul of our company. These are not his exact words, but Mr. Gabriel said:

"Have you heard about some crazy scientists over in California? Apparently they are very close to making a fusion reaction in a laboratory setting, its something called the NIF project. They use these really big lasers and hit a small pellet of fuel to create Fusion. This is a really great thing, if they can get this to work this has the potential to create un-imaginable amounts of energy and could solve many of the earths energy problems, in addition to destroying many of the earths stores of nuclear material."

While I can not confirm the last portion of the statement, I can say that this is indeed what is happening, being intimately involved with this project my self. The science, physics and physical aspects of this project are really quite interesting. The premise is to use about 200 laser beams all focused on the same target. This target contains Fuseable material (usually an isotope of hydrogen), by increasing the temperature of the sample with those lasers it is possible (in theory) to force the atoms to fuse together. So what you say? Well Fusion has a much higher energy yield than Fission which is what happens in a Nuclear Reactor. Fission works by breaking apart unstable high Atomic weight atoms, Usually U235 or U238. When these atoms split They form two new atoms, BUT the weight of these two atoms when added together does not equal the original weight of the Uranium atom. The excess weight is converted into energy. Each split makes a set amount of energy dictated mostly by the mass difference between the uranium and its fission products, about 202MeV. There is another way to generate energy using the following Nuclear binding energy curve.

Uranium is far out to the right, and when it splits you move up the curve to the left. Fusion is better, it usually starts with hydrogen far to the left, when you fuse it you get a helium atom, some neutrons and energy. When you fuse an atom, you move up the energy curve to the right. At first look, at the released energy, it would seem fission is better (220MeV per reaction vs 4.03MeV per reaction for Hydrogen fusion). But if one takes into account the energy released per unit mass, the fusion reaction is about 5 times more energetic and doesn't have all the nasty nuclear waste products at he Fission does.

So the upshot is Fusion created a lot more energy using the same amount of fuel mass with less nuclear waste products than fission. This is not to say it is without its drawbacks, but if this works we'll have a limitless amount of energy at out disposal.

Thanks to Wikipedia for the chart above.

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.

The Sum of All Fears

I know that many of you pay attention to what's going on in the world, who doesn't? In light of recent events, and my perception that many people, through no fault of their own, have very little understanding of radiation and radioactivity in general, I have decided to write these two short articles to try to decrease the level of FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt). The subject that I am commenting about is the recent dual tragedy of earthquake/tsunami and the resultant nuclear facility problems that have been plastered all over the news. You have probably heard of the "plutonium leak" near Fukushima and that there have been increased levels of radiation found in the rainwater in Boston, I am going to try to alleviate any fears that you might have about these two events. First the rain water in Boston. The amount of radioactivity that was detected in the rainwater in Boston was 71pico-Curies. For those who don't know what a Curie is, have no fear, a Curie is defined as 37000000000 (37 Billion) radio active decays per second. The unit prefix PICO is defined as the quoted number (in this case 71) multiplied by 0.000000000001. Now for the math bit which makes this relevant, multiplying both numbers together we get a number that in essence means that they were detecting about 2.6 radioactive decays per second. If this sounds like a lot, for comparison, the smoke alarm currently in your house has 30600 decays per second. Additionally the radioactive substance detected in Boston is Iodine131. Iodine131 has a half life of 8 days. This means that half the iodine is gone after 8 days, so in 4 weeks the amount left will be a little over 1/20 of what was originally detected.

Now for Fukushima. There was a reported plutonium leakage found in the soil surrounding the reactor. The amount of plutonium that was found in the soil was very small; in fact it would not normally have caused any concern whatsoever since the amount that was found was in no way more or less than what was scattered around the globe when the US and Russia were testing our nuclear weapons. The only reason that they know that this material came from Fukushima is because of the specific isotope (or atomic variation if you don't know that an isotope is) was specific to the Fukushima reactors. I would like to stress that they did not measure any radioactivity appreciably above the normal levels that are usually found in soil anywhere in the world.

As I am sure that this is not the last of the news that will come from Japan, there will most likely be follow-up posts.