most recent 30 from http://paleohacks.com 2013-05-18T09:47:13Z http://paleohacks.com/feeds/user/5895 http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/rdf http://paleohacks.com/questions/32804/what-are-you-doing-to-avoid-radioactive-contamination-in-your-food/48345#48345 Ken 2011-06-29T09:36:31Z 2011-06-29T09:36:31Z

<p>Hmm, I found this: <a href="https://apps.who.int/fsf/Codex/GuidelineLevelsforRadionuclidesinFoods.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://apps.who.int/fsf/Codex/GuidelineLevelsforRadionuclidesinFoods.pdf</a></p> <p>According to this, for 131I, 134Cs, 137Cs, the rough conversion factor from consumed becquerels to sieverts is 10^-8.</p> <p>So eating 0.1 Kg snack of anchovies from the 1,280 Bq/Kg (total of 131I, 134Cs, 137Cs) sample found by Greenpeace offshore Nakoso port (about 50Km from ground zero) would give you a 1.28 μSv dose.</p> <p>I'm guessing that this "conversion factor" is very rough, but maybe it gives some kind of indication of the order of magnitude.</p> <p>So we are talking about a dental xray. I personally would not worry about a one time dosage of that magnitude, though I don't like anchovies.</p> <p>Be sure to know the difference between μSv (microsieverts) and mSv (millisieverts). You can think of μSv as relevant on the order of hours or days; mSv as relevant to years; and Sv as really really bad.</p> <p>On the other hand, finding fish at these levels outside of 50km completely invalidates the assertion that dilution renders the radiation negligible. It's only one order of magnitude below where I would not want to think about eating it.</p> <p>Also, Greenpeace found seaweed at over 127,000 Bq/kg over 50km from the site. That's quite a bit more scary, because just 0.1 kg of this seaweed gives you a 0.12 mSv dose. That won't kill you, at least not right away, but IMO it's probably a good idea to steer clear of the mSv range at the dinner table.</p> <p>Which is too bad because I really like sushi.</p>

http://paleohacks.com/questions/32804/what-are-you-doing-to-avoid-radioactive-contamination-in-your-food/48339#48339 Ken 2011-06-29T08:07:20Z 2011-06-29T08:07:20Z

<p>It seems to me that although computing Sv from Bq is nontrivial, it would be nice to find a dosage calculator that does this for ingestion of specific material. For example, if I ingest 1000 Bq of 137Cs, I should know the Sv dosage. Unfortunately I can't seem to find such a calculator.</p>

http://paleohacks.com/questions/32804/what-are-you-doing-to-avoid-radioactive-contamination-in-your-food/32824#32824 Ken 2011-06-29T21:32:49Z 2011-06-29T21:32:49Z

Bree, you need to correctly distinguish between μSv (microsieverts) and mSv (millisieverts). Based on your answer, you are not aware of the difference, and as a result your quantitative results are all off by a factor of 1000. DOSE PER UNIT INTAKE FACTOR (Sv/Bq) varies between 10^-6 to 10^-8 depending on the radionuclide. 10^-6 = μ (micro). So its 1000s of Bq that are worth worrying about, not so much small numbers of Bq. Even so, the huge levels found in seaweed 50 km from the site is quite scary. <a href="https://apps.who.int/fsf/Codex/GuidelineLevelsforRadionuclidesinFoods.pdf" rel="nofollow">apps.who.int/fsf/Codex/&hellip;</a>