A nice thread going on at enenews about the recent tritium findings at Fukushima. It show how people are trying to understand what different types of radiation - alpha, beta, gamma- and the various radioactive isotopes, noble gases, etc. interact with the environment. Many of the experts actually do not have this information and rely on a misreading or best interpretation of research, which leaves it to the ay person to figure out. At enenews, the best place i know where bloggers try to do this between complaining, dooms-daying and freaking out, and calming each other down, people go get some facts, then try to interpret them and others jump in to clarify, so everyone might be wrong about some stuff and eventually everyone can have the same level of shared understanding. Thats democracy and i love it. Not what our sciences are about anymore, but, people still make it happen. In tonights thread, i just read THE absolute best short summary, though slightly technical description of why low dose radiation is often more harmful than medium and higher doses. Shaker1 points out that the scientific term weak radioisotope, in this case, tritium, is being interpreted by uncareful scientists as meaning therefore not harmful when it really means a lower emitting frequency. These lower, weaker emitting frequencies are the ones that have a better chance of absorption into biological life. Think Monsanto - hey, its only a tiny little fish gene in your tomato. What could go wrong?! I include Shaker1s post here. It IS technical, and my eyes start to gloss over a little, but, its also a thing of beauty AND very important information. I will work out a laypersons phrasing very soon and repost both, but, if for no other reason than to see people, some professional, most just folks like me, trying to educate ourselves and each other because our institutions do not, you can see that amid the handwringing, and there is plenty of reason for that, too, people from around the world are coming together to teach and learn the real science on the energy made from nuclear radiation. Public healthworkers should be doing this, but, they dont know this stuff. Professor Banana at UC Berkeley should be doing this stuff but he dont know bananas. The government should be doing this stuff but they would have to buck a cornerstone of energy production and campaign contributions. The nuclear industry should be doing this but theyd be closed down if they really explained it all. So, who SHOULD be doing this is not doing this, so its up to us. And, yes we can. No, im not running for office. Shaker1 January 26, 2014 at 4:13 am · Reply This also may help: ccnr.org/tritium_Fairlie.pdf These are major misconceptions. In radiobiology, so-called ʻweakʼ particles in fact have higher radiobiological effectiveness than more powerful emitters. Paradoxically, the lower their energy, the more effective they become. For example, β particles from tritium are actually two to three times more damaging than γ rays (explained later). Therefore to describe β particles from tritium as ʻweakʼ is misleading: it is better to term them ʻlow rangeʼ. The reason for the greater effectiveness of low range particles has to do with the track structure of ionizing radiations. So-called ʻstrongʼ radiations (such as γ rays from cobalt-60) have very long tracks in tissue, but most of their energy is frittered away in small amounts over their long tracks. Damaging amounts of energy are deposited only at the ends of tracks. Low-range β emitters such as tritium effectively consist only of such track ends, and therefore are more damaging per disintegration than higher energy emitters. Humans can become tritiated not only by skin absorption but by inhalation of contaminated water vapour, and by ingestion of contaminated food and water. When tritium enters the body, it is readily taken up and used in metabolic reactions and in cellular growth: over 60% of the bodyʼs atoms are hydrogen atoms and every day about 5% of these are engaged in metabolic reactions and cell proliferation. The result is that a proportion of the… Report comment Shaker1 January 26, 2014 at 4:18 am · Reply cont… The result is that a proportion of the tritium taken in is fixed to proteins, lipids and carbohydrates, and most importantly to nucleoproteins such as DNA. This is called organically-bound tritium (OBT), which is non-uniformly distributed in the body and which is retained for longer periods than tritiated water (HTO). (All ICRP dosimetric models assume the opposite – that nuclides are homogenously distributed in the body/tissue organ of interest). Doses from OBT are therefore higher than from HTO. The longer people are exposed to tritiated water, the higher their levels of OBT become until, in the case of very lengthy exposures lasting for years, equilibrium is established.
Posted on: Sun, 26 Jan 2014 10:50:25 +0000