I know that across this month or two I feel like I have bombarded the reader with all sorts of information. I really do hope that some of it was interesting and all of it was informative. That truly was my goal: to inform about some nuclear knowledge and to at times share an interesting opinion. It does actually sadden me a little to end this. I sometimes imagine some person late in the future stumbling upon my blog and finding it to be really interesting. Then hopefully in some way I help that person with this information. I doubt it but maybe. So in that sense it is a little sad to cut this to an end. However, this has been quite a lot of back to back blogging and I am happy to let it go. Maybe sometime from now I'll come back to it, but for now this is it and onwards to what comes after this. After graduation. Just in case you're interested I'll be heading off to medical school. Wish me luck. Okay now getting back into it...
I just wanted to briefly talk about a recent risk involved with working in nuclear power. Today we're talking about terrorism. I want to take a moment to give my support and prayers for those in Brussels and family members that may have been affected by the recent attacks.I truly do hope for a resolution to this unrest. The Brussels attacks claimed at least 30 lives and left many more wounded. There were also somewhere around 200 wounded as well. There were 3 blasts. 2 went off at the airport and 1 at the subway. You may have already known this. But did you know that after these attacks there has been a sizable increase in security at the Doel and Tihange Nuclear Power Plants? Working at a nuclear power plant is very much a dangerous job possibly beside the low risk of radiation and such.It seems that the men behind the bombing also had hopes of crafting a dirty bomb instead. They even went as far as to set up a camera at a researcher's house that worked at a plant. Their probable plan was to cause some type of blackmail situation and force access to the plant or the theft of some material that would aid their development. Luckily, this plan did not come to fruition as the results could have been worse, even though I acknowledge the weight of this tragedy currently. This really is a recent example of the current threats of working with nuclear energy. If after you land your future industry job you guys come back to your house and spot an unknown camera watching you, be wary. These things do very much happen and I hope for all my friends' future prosperity and safety.
I had a lot of fun with classmates and I am grateful to any of my readers.
So I guess this post will be a short update on what seems to be actually one of the worst spills in American history yet I also feel like not many knew about. When I left off TVA had just spilled 1 billion gallons of coal sludge-waste into the local rivers. It was fined a sum of 11 million and then proceeded with a billion dollar plan to repair what it caused. I do recognize that they do deserve credit for cleaning up what they caused. They pledged to return the environment to its previous condition or better and I am confident that they made strides to do as such. But whether that will actually be possible or will they just return it to an acceptable state is hard to see. I believe they may be done with their repairs but finding information on the current state is very difficult. However, they did build public parks in the cleaned area to better utilize the space. But what is the actual aftermath? How has the world changed to combat such catastrophe and what have we learned?
I do respect TVA in some cases for making this effort in clean up. They even spent another billion plus in order to convert their facility into a solid coal ash waste site instead of liquid, the solid state appears to be much safer... Other than that, I think that's about it...Shocking right? No government inspections and tightening down of regulations? No probationary periods. Nah. The EPA did for years since the accident in 2008 debate passing stricter regulation for the coal ash. They thought about but probably decided it wasn't worth it (or they decided it was more worth it for them to stay close friends with coal). Recently in 2014, they passed their first regulations on the "toxic" waste product. Did they decree that it was toxic and hazardous? No, they decreed that it was the same as household waste and should be regulated the same as landfills. They mandated that coal companies should regularly check for signs of possible future spills and leaching, but they are not going to enforce that rule. They mandated that they publish about the safety of their site and about the contamination of local groundwater. But all those results will likely get buried in piles of other information. It is up to the state and citizens to prove that they were harmed by the coal plant, likely after massive harm and intense legal battles. Oh and the old ponds that were used before for coal ash deposits and are currently leaking into groundwater? Well, they passed laws stating that coal plant must begin to line their active ponds in order to stop leaking. However, those ponds that are truly problematic from a long time ago are abandoned and actively leaking, but they are not actively in use. They will not be taken care of by this set of law. I feel that all of this was basically the state of regulations before this accident anyway now it just is explicitly stated...
Finally, did these regulations have any impact? I don't know. It's actually pretty hard to find information about any spills since 2008, but I kept at it. And the answer to the previous question is probably not. I haven't seen any recent spills since the regulation passed in 2014, but if I were to guess its probably a matter of time. There have been multiple spills since the 2008 TVA spill. I saw one in 2009 which was comparably small at 4,000 gallons (it is sad that I can call this small but in comparison it is). In 2014, there was also a larger spill in which 82,000 tons of coal ash was spilled. There was a fine of 102 million (which is a little more than the previous fine) for Duke Energy, yet I'm sure the spills won't stop.
Sad note to end on, but it's the truth. No tight laws were made and even while they were writing these laws the spills keeping popping up.
No this is not the same video as before, yet another spill.
Any of you guys out there have any siblings? Any of you that are saying yes have those kinds of siblings? Those kinds of siblings that truly get away with murder and parents seem to just let them off with a slap on the wrist. Truly infuriating just because you remember that times when you tried to get away with murder and nearly got murdered. If you couldn't tell, I've been there and preferential treatment is horrible. It can really just get under your skin. I could make my post about this along, but the true goal was to hopefully rile you guys up to. Get you all in the right type of mood for the upcoming example of preferential treatment. I don't know at what point it stops being called preferential treatment and gets the label of corruption, but either way I'll get down to it.
So this post was inspired by a post by my blogger-friend NukeStudentLife. In this post, they talked about similar unfairness in regard to a catastrophe that occurred in 2015 in California in the form of a natural gas leak. This was a great disaster yet it seems to not have been covered thoroughly on the news. Not many people knew about it. I sure didn't. Yet the world knows about Three Mile Island and Fukushima and such. Many detest nuclear power for these events despite the "true evil" that is lurking under their nose. This one-sidedness is unfair. So I decided I'd look up another incident that is also fairly recent and I'll possibly take a post or two to explore it. I'd be surprised if you guys have heard about it and comment if you have. Today we're talking about the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Kingston Fossil Plant Slurry Spill (long name...maybe that's why it didn't get coverage as news reporters couldn't handle the mouthful).
So were going to quickly mention that BP Oil spill not too long ago. Do you remember it? It happened in 2010. It continued for months. It was a major catastrophe and was listed as the largest spill that happened in US waters. Deepwater Horizon. Well that catastrophe dumped some 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. I remember this being on the news for months. So why haven't we heard of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Kingston Fossil Plant Slurry Spill? Well, it only spilled 5.4 million cubic yards of liquid fly ash (coal waste) into the surrounding environment. Not too bad right? Well google is great with conversions as 5.4 million cubic yards equals about 1 billion gallonsof toxic sludge. Still wondering why we haven't heard of it? Me too. It was not before our time and it's not currently on the news. This happened in 2008, about 2 years before the supposed "worst accident" in US waters. Yet somehow it didn't get the media coverage it deserved. Coal power was allowed to keep its reputation somewhat clean despite this massive calamity.
A brief summary is that a dike (had to look up the actual dictionary definition of this and its basically a dam, either natural or artificial) burst causing this massive release and spill into the nearby Emory and Clinch rivers. Of course, it also coated another 300 acres of land with the toxic wave of sludge, snapping trees and even destroying some houses. Many more houses were damaged and properties ruined. Luckily there were no casualties. TVA got slammed (not really, more like poked) with a meh minor 11.5 million dollar fine. They then at least bought up the properties pledging to return them to their original state or better. This is why that earlier fine was rather minor, as the repair has been proceeding for the past six years. It's only now that TVA has said that these properties are up to standard and ready for resale. The repair process has cost about 1.1 billion dollars.
I really think the public might need to worry more about the coal and gas plants being built in striking distance to them. This fly ash is also the dangerous ash that I mentioned in my earlier post that is not only toxic but can be just as radioactive if not more than anything a nuclear power plant releases. On top of that, it could wind up as a wave crashing into your front door. Go Nuclear. Maybe another post later about some aftermath.
Environmental Protection or Protection from the Environment. That will be the question for this blog post today. I think today, I will choose an easy topic. So, what is the purpose of ENU4641 Applied Radiation Protection? Should we be using this knowledge to protect ourselves from the environment or protect our environment?
Well, I feel this to all come down to personal opinion. With an appropriate definition, either task seems like a worthy endeavour. However, personally I feel that I would reside on the protecting our environment side. There are a few simple reasons. A "protect ourselves class" seems more like shielding. That class seems to have a learn to protect yourself and then you can protect others philosophy. I also feel that the majority of time spent in this class was spent on the environmental impact: dispersion, modeling, waste, and such. Although, I guess the end self-improvement material could be considered protecting ourselves from the challenges of the real world.
I also feel that protecting the environment to be a slightly more worthwhile goal, although again they are both great. If you don't protect yourself you can't protect the environment. There are real threats in the natural world and background radiation and radon gas can be scary things. But the majority of exposure seems to come from lifestyle. For my definition of protecting the environment, though I believe it can be a much harder task but with necessary responsibilities.
Yes we should save the trees. The trees, the plants, the animals are beautiful creatures that deserve our respect and protection. I also want to state quickly that a majority of nuclear power activities have negligible effect on the biology of its environment. But, we need to keep it that way. We need to keep exposures low and not only low if the pathway comes back directly to us. We still need to innovate and model and try to protect our surroundings that really has no earnings from the nuclear plants or any plants that are built. This is where I like to make my definition clear. It's not only the plants and environment that need protection. We need to protect our surroundings: all the elements outside of our industry that have come together to provide for our ability to built a plant. Whether it be the ecosystem right outside our walls, or the rivers that we use to cool the plant, the nearest city, or the farmer and his family a few miles south. They have graced us with the ability to be here and we should protect the environment that has given us so much, and we hope to give back to.
Yup. Well that's as soap-boxy as I can get for the day. Thanks as always.
In honor of all these last boxing related blog posts, I guess I'm winding up starting something, I probably didn't have to. But when you actually have an idea to blog about you should. This originally started as a comment-rebuttal of NuclearNicks post, but for what this was turning into I figured I should clearly organize my thoughts and make it into a clear rebuttal post. His was on "Gun Freedom" and I will try to counter that with my own thoughts. Maybe I'll even try to make this somewhat nuclear related. Here goes nothing...
I like your comparison to insurance. I like comparisons. However, my first problem is I don't think it's completely equal and substitutable. Have YOU ever killed someone? Across your X years of life, have you taken someone else's life? I hope you haven't, but you never know. Have you needed to take someone's life? I mean needed as there was no other way around it. Have you needed to take the government's life? Well that's X years of safety so far that you haven't needed it. How about your parents' Y and Z years? Compare those values to insurance needs and you'll see its very different. The need for a dental checkup and insurance is much different from that of a gun.
My problem with guns is that they have this tendency to cause people to undervalue another person's life. I mean guns give you the ability to feel the weight of their life in the palm of your hand. To feel it as you pull the trigger .... pow and then its gone. Simple. Easy. All the future possibilities this person had gone thanks to the purchase of this $600 dollar Glock-17 you bought a few months ago. Is that equitable? $600=One Life. Maybe if your conservative on your shots too you could make 600=2-3 lives. Thrifty, Simple and Easy. College students on a budget. Maybe that's partly it too. This world is pushing for simplicity and guns are one of the simplest "solutions" to violence and conflict. I am using the word "solution" liberally, however.
So.. continuing on..let me ramble on some specific problems I have with your post. Do you need Gunsurance? (lol catchy). Are they the same. One you pay over the course of your life possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars that hopefully if you get sick you will get monetary compensation in order to save your life or the people your death and bills will impact. Now with a gun you again pay $200 to a few thousand dollars and a few dollars in bullets to take the life anybody that you see fit. For the ability to kill someone either legally or illegally. Owning a gun provides that power, there's no necessary legality to the actions that follow. That's maybe a $500 dollar investment and then if you're a sharpshooter every single bullet could be someone's life. So insurance saves you money through money valuing, your life at maybe hundreds of thousands. The purchase of a gun allows you to kill freely valuing, life at maybe a few hundred. Do you see how this starts to become a questionable deal? Someone's getting financially screwed. Who? That would be the person dead at the pull of your trigger. Insurance is great and something everyone should have. However the fact that anyone doesn't see that insurance valuing lives in the $100,000s and guns value lives in the $100s doesn't lead to more deaths is questionable to me. Gun's tell you that lives are on sale. Take one now. Moral of the story there is a big ethical price tag that the low price of guns masks. It's not the same as insurance.
Not sure which point to choose next for rebuttal as I have already written a lot. "Taking away guns is not going to stop the murder or suicide". This is actually a powerful statement. In its truth lies most of the fight against gun-control. This is actually the type of statement that should be backed by statistical evidence truthfully. If you say this, I would like to see the evidence not mere conjecture. I will take the stance of the opposite and as this is a an important point in my argument, I will follow it with evidence:
Australia
In one of his first acts as leader, Prime Minister John Howard announced major reforms to Australia's gun control laws just 12 days after 35 people died at the hands of a lone gunman wielding a military-style semi-automatic rifle at a popular tourist spot in Tasmania on April 28, 1996.
In the wave of public revulsion against what became known as the Port Arthur massacre, the move for stricter gun controls was led by Howard, who had taken office just seven weeks earlier.
He took his anti-gun campaign around the country, at one stage addressing a hostile pro-gun rally wearing a bullet-proof vest. He also oversaw a successful gun "buy-back" scheme that took some 650,000 guns out of circulation.
High-caliber rifles and shotguns were banned, licensing was tightened and remaining firearms were registered to uniform national standards -- an accomplishment regarded by many in the country as Howard's enduring legacy.
Australia has been compared to the United States for its "frontier mentality." But unlike the U.S., there is no constitutional right to bear arms and gun ownership is markedly lower.
In the years after the Port Arthur massacre, the risk of dying by gunshot in Australia fell by more than 50% -- and stayed there. A 2012 study by Andrew Leigh of Australian National University and Christine Neill of Wilfrid Laurier University also found the buyback led to a drop in firearm suicide rates of almost 80% in the following decade.
I'm sure I could add more examples, but in hopes of keeping this short. Have you ever known someone who committed suicide? I hope you haven't. A better question is have you known someone who committed suicide by gun? I don't think its right to assume that if they can't get their hands on a gun they're going to kill themselves anyway with whatever they can find. I personally believe most suicides to not be dedicated actions. It's not "X is killing themself tomorrow in whichever way X can find". I would believe most of these to be a string of moments of weakness by troubled people with one instant that is a complete breaking point. Not having the simple answer (gun) easily available at this breaking point could save someone's life. But even if this wasn't the case and this person was searching for any way to kill themselves, if you really cared about them wouldn't you be willing to try anything even if it's not a certain bet to save your loved one's life. To put it another way, with a volatile troubled person you'll be mitigating risk. Bringing home a gun raises their likelihood of committing suicide some amount, thus gun control should lower it. Multiply that by thousands and randomness of chances, then it should save lives. Do responsible parents leave knives and small choking hazards on the ground if they have a baby in the house? In the same way that making a sharp object hard for a baby to reach, gun control can save lives of troubled people. Even though that's not the only thing that can kill a baby. It is an easy way for a baby to harm itself and something also easy for us to control with better habits.
I could go on and on. Maybe I'll save some for another time and for comments, Very open to comments and I mean no harm by my words but where there is passion about a topic there is the potential for someone to get hurt. I'll end with a nuclear tie-in. In your world with these supposed reasons, what is the end point in mind? Where does it lead? With this reasoning, it would make sense that every single person be armed with guns. Hell, they should be armed to the teeth. I mean they need to be well-stocked in gunsurance just like everyone should have good medical insurance. I also need my new glock to protect myself from the big bad government. My handgun will surely protect me from a tank anyhow... After everyone is armed to the teeth, does this seem like a world in which there will be less violence and less death? Safety?? You instinctually know the truth. Let me liken it to this, why is there this big push for nuclear disarmament? It is very similar. A country, as it is a country, should have the right to make nukes as freely as it wants to. They are supposedly a great deterrent from another power "the government" coming into your life and doing whatever it wants. But why does each country or each individual person owning one of these not seem like a good idea? If they are just strictly a deterrent, proof of freedom, and "supposedly" could (using your reasons) be good insurance and lead to safety. Yet many people believe the opposite. Some may disagree, but I believe it to be very similar. There also are some good topics about guns and your rights, freedom, wars, ethical dilemmas and so on, but maybe later. Sorry about the long one but being thorough.
QUICK SIDE NOTE Too-- My views aren't exactly against guns but for knowledge. Maybe if people could rationalize the cost of a life they would then be fit for a gun. I don't hope for a gun free world. Gun Control not Gun Free. I'm not taking your guns away from you but I would make it harder to get one. Names IDs and Signatures, Intention, Background Checks, Gun-safes, are all things that I believe would be make the world better if enacted.
*** Edited to add video .... Wouldn't let me add the regular version here's regular one. Should watch the link. I think its pretty funny.
Just when you thought it was over and that oily giant was gonna lie down for the count. He gets right back up. So now for this post I think Coach is gonna advise a different approach so our nuclear contender can land a crippling hit.
So where do YOU think would hurt the most? Well, when the standard attacks aren't working and none of your lucky shots are connecting, where do you go? The answer: dig to the body. Why there? Have you ever tried to work on no food or a non-cooperating stomach. The body (stomach) is your core. It's your foundation. Hit it a few times and the oily champ will get shaky. Hit it a few more times and the oily Champs own punches will get weak as he starts going on defense. A few more times and that defense will break, his hands will fall down, and you can land that final blow to the head. Or he just will fall over in the pain. It's textbook. Also making a champ look silly and disproving his foundation is a sure way to get those fans (the public) that were on his sides to come over to the right corner.
So what are the gut-shots we need in order to get those fans and stop oil in his tracks? What is the foundation of this supposed oil over nuclear advantage? Well, that would be fear. That's what this all boils down to. Fear and misinformation. So the coolest coach of all time is going to counsel Radioactive Rocky to land some gut punches by showing exactly why the public should actually be afraid of oil and how nuclear compares. I'm talking misconceptions about oil vs. nuclear and those startling facts about oil.
How about I land the first one. Energy production from oil gives you (the public) more of a radioactive dose than your friendly nuclear power plant on average. Oil burning refines and condense the leftover contaminants concentrating them into leftover ash. This leftover ash is much more radioactive than what was started with. Add to that some slacking containment protocols and then you have a higher dose to the general populace than the nuclear power industry, which was designed to contain their hazardous materials from the start. Oil plants thus put out equal or higher radioactive dosage. This may not seem like a scary fact, but this is what I believe to be the root of fear of nuclear power. This and the believe that a nuclear Armageddon is going to happen from a power plant going haywire. It needs to be known that there is less risk than oil and more benefits to nuclear. It needs to be know that the third arm you think your going to develop when a nuclear power plant opens in your neighborhood is not going to happen and is even more likely with oil.
Feel free to comment or make posts about your Oil-Gut-Shots. I really do think we need to consider nuclear from a PR stance and how to get into a good light with the public. Thus I don't think this boxing metaphor is that farfetched of an idea. Well anyways guys, its always great rambling and being random. Hope yall enjoyed it...
Okay well now that I have lured you in again I will sadly admit that I lied. No, this will not be an ultimate showdown. Maybe later sometime down the line. Also what truly is winning? Coal is currently holding the market, but am I expecting nuclear to make shocking upset sometime down the line. Of course, I am. I wouldn't be a nuke if I wasn't. So let's have a fair match and make sure nuclear wins. I mean we were bound to win. Mwhaha. I hope to actually compare some different facts than what is normally suggested in favor of nuclear. Yes, we are much more energy efficient. Yes, we are cleaner. Yes, we are safer. Please reader, if you do not already know this I hope you will look it up. There are numerous sources that confirm this. But for a post or two I will go into possible ways I would coach "radioactive champ" if I was in his corner.
"Alright champ, all I'm asking for you is to go the distance. That oily chump over there can't go the 12 rounds aka 200 years like you can. Just outlast him and let him get what's coming to him" says the coolest boxing coach ever. There are estimates out there that coal may run out somewhere in the next 100 years. I guess for clarity I will state that this is off current known supply and assumes a compensating demand, as the other fossil fuels run out the usage of coal will increase and we will run out of it sooner. But truthfully its gonna run out sometime. The article took a guess and shot for 2088 as the magical year when nuclear's enemy (competitor) bites the dust. But it didn't account for the increase in demand due to the population growth of the world and technological growth. It could be sooner. Also, it didn't account for the unknown future coal or some other fossil fuel pocket that will extend these decays, ever so slightly.
Coach time again. Coach: "So with efficiency, safety, and cleanliness were a better fighter. We have all we need to take this fight. But we also can go the distance (oh for all you non-boxing/non-rocky fans that means to go for the full length of the match)." There are sources that state we should have enough Uranium for the next 200 years (though this doesn't include increasing demand and possible nuclear growth). "The reigning champ (oil) is a fake that bribed and corrupted his way to the top. He has all the fans now currently because of how corrupt he is and how bad he made us look. What's a possible winning strategy then? We could just jab every now and then mainly dodge (stick and move). Then wait till he runs out a steam and KO's himself. Over this fight of attrition the fans are sure to see who the real champ is and fans (public) will come straight to us."
Nuclear Coach returns...What if that oily chump somehow gets a second win and lasts closer to our 200 years? "Well then we hit them with that second wind and those new fast breeder hooks we've been practicing" With Uranium depleting we would be able to extend our nuclear industry lifetime by focusing on Plutonium-based fast breeder technology.
This plan shows a clear path to victory. It would also be a fun path as we get to stop worrying and watch the slow demise of our competitor. Also the fans come running to us, and we no longer have to worry about our image. It would be a funny path in the way in the ring, but probably not so great in real life. At that point, the cost of burning all that oil would have a heavy environmental cost. Also not taking this fight seriously would be a serious blow to innovation. Nuclear industry should actually stay in the fight and continue to struggle and grow. As the better fighter, I think they are bound to make it to the top. It is just a matter of time.
This was just as always some random nuclear facts....all disguised in a funny metaphor and some hypotheticals. Hope yall enjoyed it.
So now that we've seen some of the outlying reasoning behind environmental modeling and what we are trying to prevent, I thought I'd move this blog in yet another direction. I've talked about radionuclide dispersion in air, water, and ground. Yes it can disperse in all those ways. Thus we, as nuclear educated people want to model such occurrences. We want to model the results due to these dispersions resulting from storage types, nuclear project types, normal operation, disasters, and leaks. But one that area of modeling that has seemed to interest me is the modeling of those true third-parties to our nuclear industry. How does the world's nuclear activities affect the biotic life here. How does it get dispersed after animals drink from a contaminated stream or plants are irrigated by contaminated ground water. I find that to be truly interesting for some reason and hopefully you do as well. I am impressed that even these effects are both monitored and modeled, effects that I didn't even think much about prior to this year. Of course, most of the studies are human centered. We care about the food chain of which we are a part of and usually the endpoint of. How does the beef from a cow that was eating radioactive feed affect us? What kind of variables do they track and model? If you think this is interesting, well you can keep reading and even glance through this enormous textbook here to sate your curiosity. I would recommend a glance through sections 2 & 3 that relate to plants and animals. That link goes rather in depth being even specific to each radionuclide and can give you more than you would want to know. However, today I just plan to give a quick overview of some of the thoughts and factors that are assessed when these effects are modeled. Mainly to avoid typing out a textbook of which I would not get paid for, I'll just try and hit some of the highlights that I found interesting. It should be noted that for some specific radionuclides there is not enough data in order to draw conclusion about how they transfer into plants and animals. Thus it is common to compensate by utilizing stable radionuclides that more data may be available for. Also chemical analogues can be used instead. For example, Radium is similar to Calcium and understanding Calcium absorption can then lead to Radium transfer data.
Plants
Plants are rather cool organisms for study. They absorb water and nutrients from the soil. Some nutrients can even be dissolved in the water and then absorbed by the plant. Thus it would make sense that a major area of study is what happens when plants absorb radionuclides on top of these nutrients. There also is a possibility for aerial deposition. The main goal of these studies are to figure out a transfer coefficient which would work out to be how much radionuclide enters a plant relative to how much was readily available. Eventually these plants with high transfer coefficients and high radionuclide concentrations come back to us into our own diets. With plants it is important to analyze what type of event the contamination is coming from and consequently what form or chemical species the contaminant will be in when it arrives at the plants. In this sense, the study has pointed identifying the contaminant as either oxides or activation/products. One group primarily would remain in an insoluble particulate form in the normal environment (pH and reductive capacity) and the other would mainly be dissolved. Some species may primarily exist in ionized forms which can aid in stability and assist in its bioavailability (unaltered absorption). Plants also have interesting methods in which they handle the contaminates. Chemical analogs are analyzed with them being transferred similar to the normal nutrients. Other contaminants that are not similar to the normally absorbed nutrients are seen as toxins. Sometimes they do enter and sneak past. Often they are blocked, remaining in the soil. But some do trickle by. Another mechanism is the selective absorption of the radioactive contaminant/chemical contaminant that is then neutralized or compartmentalized (locked up) in a safe place away from vital processes.
Animals
Of course animals are of great interest. With me being the arch-enemy of every vegetarian (you know who you are) out there, this type of modeling is of great interest. Actually I'm okay with vegetarians as this means more meat for me. Mostly joking though as I am also concerned with the health of the animals themselves and modeling how they absorb under conditions is of great relevance. This study goes into cow milk, sheep milk, goat milk, beef, pork, lamb and such. All topics that again weren't at the top of my mind when I thought of environmental exposure and modeling. Studies are done to figure out transfer coefficients basing them off of the radioactivity of the selected food (milk, beef, etc) divided by the feed that was given to the animal. Of interest as well is the ratio of the chemical analogs such as Ra/Ca and Cs/K as this can be a direct indicator of absorption. Scientists can get an apparent absorption by seeing the radioactivity of the feed given and compare it to the fecal matter's radioactivity. Some magnitude of the difference can then be assumed to absorbed into circulation. Obviously, animals should not want radioactivity to settle into their tissue thus homeostatic processes exist to secrete the contaminants, This can be modeled as well as it is excreted through urinary and fecal processes. Actually pooling in the milk leading to excretion is another form of homeostatic control and removal or radionuclides. Getting averages for these excretion methods can help in modeling versus diffect levels of radioactive feed and different animals subjected to it.
All in all, this was just a brief exploration of the some environmental modeling. I hope you enjoyed it. If anything peaked your interest you can follow the previously mentioned link or go through the citation below. Thanks
To wrap up the blog post on Radithor, I thought I'd post about an actual outcome of Radithor. This stands separately from the Radium Girls and their licking of Radium paint off of paintbrushes. This post will be about the tragic life of Eden Byers. Radithor was invented by William J Bailey. He boasted about his miracle cure containing at least 1microCurie of Ra-226 and Ra-228. Also that it was entirely harmless. Eben Byers had the misfortune of later proving that final statement wrong.
William J Bailey was a rather "resourceful" man. From a poor background, he worked his way all the way into Harvard, until he could no longer pay the tuition and had had to drop out. He still claimed however, to be a Harvard graduate. Actually, not only was he a "Harvard Graduate" but also a Dr with an imagined medical degree from the University of Vienna. This eventually came back to bite him as a lawsuit and a guilty plea to illegally practicing medicine. After dropping out of Harvard he launch many corporations designed to make money no matter the means. He had a company that was supposed to be be fabricated the newest line of automobiles and was accepting preorders. After he receieved hundreds of deposits, it was revealed that his production line was incapable of building one of these said cars yet alone the hundreds reserved. After a few days in prison for this, it was on to his next venture. A few failed schemes later, he came upon the mysterious radium. He started a business that originally sold radium tablets, Arium, marketing them as a healthy radiation dose one should take every night followed by a glass of water. These Arium pills were analyzed later to have an activity on the nanocurie scale, being composed mainly of other inactive ingredients. This all led to the eventual product of Radithor, which was described in my last post. Claiming it to be a great cure-all it gained major popularity as even some actual doctors recommended it to their patients (there seemed to be a kickback/bonus to any doctor that prescribed this). Also worth noting that Bailey wasn't the only one to sell Radium water he just was temporarily very successful. Also radium water was not the only source of radium exposure. There was a radiation craze around this time from radiation pills and suppositories to radiation condoms. To read more about the interesting life of William J Bailey follow this link.
Eben Byers was an athlete. He was at one time a US golf champion and a graduate from Yale. He came from a rich background. He had everything going for him and was quite popular in his time. But time dims all stars. As he was growing older his health seemed to be not as hot as it used to be. He was approaching his 50s and probably should have accepted his age and slowed down. Yet in 1927 he injured his arm during a party on a train leaving an alma mater football game. After seeing the doctor, he was healed up but also recommended a little Radithor to speed up recovery and assist his health. It was rumored that his age had been slowing down his "night life" and radium water was seen as a possible assist for this. He began taking it, and early on he did feel better. He championed for the drug making sure all his friends had a botttle. He liked it so much that he generally drank about 3 bottles a day. This all persisted for about two years until the fevers became unbearable and his teeth began falling out. Eben Byers became the scarred face of the dangers of radiation. His weakened testimony was a major factor that helped stop the sale of Radithor. Sadly, at this point he was two weak to make it to the courthouse and his testimony had to be receieved from home. In order to define how horrible this drug had left him I think it's best to just use what was said by those interviewers that went to see him that day (skip the rest of the paragraph if you have an overactive imagination coupled with an unlike of gore): "his whole upper jaw, excepting two front teeth, and most of the lower jaw had been removed. All the remaining bone tissue of his body was slowly disintegrating, and holes were actually forming in his skull." "A more gruesome experience in a more gorgeous setting [his rather expensive mansion] would be hard to imagine." Oh yeah, thus radium Springs breaking your jaw.... thats where that came from.. A little lame and a bit of a reach on the title but that was the inspiration.
Eben Byers died a few months after this testimony. His death was a strong reminder of the dangers of radiation. I yet again remind that these levels of radiation are the exception and an extreme case. This is the type of fear the public shows in regards to Fukushima and such accidents yet releases do not enter this magnitude. I hope I entertained you all with a story of consumerism and radiation dose that was not the Radium Girls. Thanks for reading.
Sorry for the lull in posts, but SPRING BREAK. Surely that is clear enough of a reason. But I'll try to get back to it. So this post will loosely play off my spring break with a horrible play on words that will become obvious at the end of the story. And these pictures that don't seem very spring break related might just eventually make sense. Well ready?... Let's Go.
It may seem obvious, but radiation can be bad for you. The majority of us know this now. But today's blog will serve as a horror movie's worth of entertainment, showing what can happen in extreme cases of radioactive pollution in your water and hopefully this will show the need for environmental pathway modeling of pollutants. This type of exposure are what we are trying to learn about, model, and prevent.
Truthfully, these cases cannot be classified as a dispersion into groundwater with the fear of eventually being ingested. The cases I am about to talk about actually skip the accidental dispersion into groundwater and are purposeful placed into drinking water and ingested. Today I'm talking about Radithor. Radithor was ingested as a patented medicine in the early 1900s. If anything, I would liken it to something that is somewhere between 5 Hour Energy and your standard multivitamins (I by no means am asserting that 5 Hour Energy has a similar lethal capacity). It was assumed that this liquid acts a general cure-all with many benefits : more energy, prevent insanity, slow aging..... Yet this cure-all was mainly Radium dissolved into a very purely distilled water. I know it would be very crazy to drink this, however, many did.
I wouldn't say these claims are completely baseless. I can see how people can come to the conclusion that extremely high doses of radiation are curative, albeit way to quickly. The assumed efficacy of Radithor was based on the limited knowledge of the curative effects of some hot springs. People that felt sick (possibly suffering from undiagnosed cancers) would emerge from hot springs eventually feeling much better. What was happening? A person who seemed to be simply worn down (undiagnosed early cancer) eventually emerged feeling much better from the miraculous springs. Well someone eventually noticed that the hot springs were irradiating their users, radioactive springs. Thus someone else decided to jump to the conclusion that any and all radiation is good for not just the cancerous sick but for everyone. Add in a little bit more misinformation and some Get$RiCh$QuICk motive and Radithor was born.
What made Radithor so dangerous? Well, some of the information that those misinformed were missing was the fact that the people were bathing in Radon-gas-dissolved-springwater, yet Radithor preaches drinking Radium dissolved water. I know that all my readers have been reading up to this point probably can spot the dangerous difference in treatment. But just for those new readers that I'm definitely roping in I'll go into it. Well we understand that both of these isotopes can decay by alpha emission. These alphas are deadly if ingested but much less so when externally applied. They rarely penetrate past the skin, depositing most of their energy mainly harmlessly in the dead regions of our outer epidermal skin layer. Yet now with Radithor we are ingesting them and applying it directly to our vital insides. Also there is the Radon-Radium difference. There were people bottling the radon hot spring water and getting people to drink it. Yet that item had its problems. When the spring water was removed from the environment, it no longer could uptake Radon gas from its surroundings. Radon with its short half-life of 3.8 days would then mainly decay out and be escaping as a gas. Thus after a few weeks that hotspring water is no longer radioactive and no longer effective. So this Radithor inventor used Radium with it 1600 yr half-life and deemed it to be a superior product. Yet Radium is also very dangerous upon ingestion as it is in the same periodic group as Calcium. Thus it can act similarly and react similarly to Calcium (same valence). What does Calcium do in your body? A lot of things but it also is a major component of our bones. Thus with Radium in our body it will be mistaken for Calcium and become a lethal component of our bones. It gets absorbed everywhere by the bones especially in the jaws of these Radithor drinkers. The set in Radium now irradiates all the surrounding cells and tissues, killing the bone it is set in, bone marrow, blood cells, muscle, and more. Thus leading to the Radium Jaw symptom and the title picture result.
This is kind of an extreme case. The types of dose experienced here due to direct ingestion would hardly what one should expect from exposures in the environment. Yet knowing these effects are important and are the reason why environmental modeling takes place. We want to prevent such high levels of exposure in our daily lives. Yes it did take some major mistakes in order to learn but atleast we did. I do not intend to make light of the lives lost due to such occurrences and I recognize their sad contribution and legacy in hopes of preventing such future tragedy.
Oh, and while I'm rambling also wanted to touch on some general infallibility. It's a great thing that we are always making strides and always learning. Yet, notice how at one point these actions were generally accepted as safe. Irreperable harm was harm done and then the danger was acknowledged. I I feel like this should be understood as a model for today as well. We will most likely continue to progress and things that we thought at one time to be true will be proven not to be. Things that we thought to be safe can later be shown not to be as well. Take this story as a tale of caution and take knowledge with a grain of salt, because one thing that is proven to be true with time may later be proven to cause "Radium Jaw".
No I don't mean in that old high school connotation where it is implied that they "awesomely" preside over other non-ruling subjects. Today I am talking about the Radionuclides Final Rule published by the EPA in 2000 that replaced old radionuclide regulation from 1977.
This ruling set revised standards for the levels that radionuclides should be found at in our water. They devised a MCL or Maximum Concentration Level for the radionuclides of Uranium, Combined Ra226/Ra228, beta/photon emitters, and the GAA mentioned in the previous post:
These standards were set for the aforementioned reasons of keeping down public dose. It also should be noted that Uranium in the water can also have harmful chemical effects on the human kidneys apart from its radiological effects.
Removal of Nuclides
So now we know how nuclides are tested and what the standards for these tests are, but how do we remove them? Reverse Osmosis has been selected by the EPA as what could be the best possible method for removal. How does it work? Osmosis is the movement of water down its concentration gradient from low solute concentration to high concentration. When solute is dissolved in a lot of water it will have low solute concentration because concentration is equal to solute amount divided by solvent amount. A high concentration would thus take place in a relatively low amount of water. Thus during osmosis water moves down its gradient by going from a low solute concentration (high amount of water) to high solute concentration (low amount of water). This is what is thermodynamically favorable and occurs spontaneously. Thus reverse osmosis makes sense to be water moving up it gradient. It moves from a high solute concentration to a low one. This is an unfavorable process and requires the input of energy to sustain it. The water with high solute level (radionuclides) is pressurized and passed against a filter with such small pores that the nuclides cannot pass through. The other side of the filter is the resulting low solute concentration (radionuclide-free) water. This process is not a 100% efficient as the all the contaminated water cannot be passed through the filter. Thus there is waste water. Also, the filter must be strong as to not burst under the pressure. If this happens the process will fail. The filters must also be cycled as the pores will get clogged reducing the ability for the water to pass through. The result of this process is waste water that can be sent to the sewer or a further processing plant and finished water.
It probably won't come as a shock to you that radionuclides can get into and then contaminate our water supply.As you have seen the worst case scenarios, of radionuclides entering almost every other medium, it may seem like common sense that our water should be under watch as well. You would be correct in assuming this after all I have written up to this point. Radionuclides can enter the water supply, and if they exhibit high activity and high in high concentration can pose very high risk upon consumption. That would be upon consumption by anyone: plants, animals, humans. But before you start reaching for the bottled water, over these next few posts, I hope to answer whether on not we are currently in such a situation that could warrant drastic action. Fukushima. Chernobyll. Nuclear Testing. Surely that is reason alone? Actually, the US has been monitoring the radiation levels in our air, precipitation, drinking water, and even our milk. To this point, they have found no cause for alarm as almost all radionuclide levels are undetectable or much lower than any level that would pose a health risk.
To start of this series, for this post I thought I'd ramble a little bit on the how the our water is actually tested. Radionuclides can exist dissolved in the water, bound to solids in the water, or in the rock surrounding the water. They can then contaminate out water, and when one goes to drink from this aquifer they also get a mouth-dose (my new unit) full of radionuclides. These pose the obvious health risks. The nuclides can be man-made or naturally occurring from the rock. So how do we figure out the levels that are present in the water? By sampling. There a few different types of sampling, but today we'll talk about Sampling by Evaporation and by Coprecipitation.
Sampling by evaporation actually works how it sounds. A sample is taken from the water source and evaporated down to a solid film. These would be the solid nuclides that would have contributed to your high mouth-dose (it'll catch on). Coprecipitation works through the addition of a Barium Sulfate/Ferric Hydroxide Mixture. This mixture binds with the radionuclides and at high concentrations precipitates out of the solution. Remove the water and you are left with a rather similar film of nuclides. The end goal of this is to rate the water source's GAA or Gross Alpha Particle Activity. Alpha Particles are one of the more dangerous types of radiation when it comes to ingestion. A high GAA is thus very bad for a water supply. These films from the samples are held against a detector in order to serve as an average for the water supply as a whole. Chemical anlaysis can also be done in order to figure out actual chemical concentration as opposed to just radioactivity analysis. However, some assumptions must be made and inaccuracies tracked as to why the GAA can vary greatly from the actual GAA of your water source. The source usually exist in equilibrium. New nuclides enter the water at a rate, leave the water at a rate, and change into new elements at a rate. These rates eventually combat against each other and concentrations equilibrate. Removing a sample from this balance and you subject to disorder again. It may eventually reach another equilibrium but with just a water sample, that equilibrium will definitely be different from what it was originally. The more time that its removed from the source the further these concentrations will be and the further away your GAA will be from the truth. Another consideration to be made is the source itself can vary, as it could operate on its own yearly cycle. Seasons affect temperature, temperature affects the entry rate of nuclides into the water, the entry rate affects equilibrium and GAA. The solution to atleast this is to perform a quaterly sample. A sample is taken 4 times during 4 three month periods. These samples are averaged together and lead to a clearer picture of the average water source activity and its GAA. Using these methods one can diagnose and track the potential health threat that is water dispersion.
So you've been lucky enough to survive the blast and now you're trying to make sure you continue to survive the coming months after the nuclear blast. Of course the common wartime concerns are necessary to contend with: Clean Water, Shelter, Food and Security (to make sure one can keep these the valuables against any other incoming threats). However, this isn't WWI were talking about. With a nuclear war and nuclear bombs, there are more risks and concerns to think about. Mainly, if you survived the blast your next concern should be the fallout.
Nuclear fallout consists of the radioactive material and dust that was blasted into the sky after a blast. Sudden excessive heat from the blast creates a violent updraft blasting ground particulates high into the air. This dust becomes bound to the residual radioactive particles that were also launched and slowly "falls out" of the air. It can then coat structures, the ground, and even survivors. At that point, these survivors wind up with these sources coating their bodies, leading to obvious health risks. Is this a life threatening situation? How should one proceed first?
My goal of this blog is to guide you through some basic decontamination procedure. Well, you should first make sure you are able to get to a nearby location that could shield you from the continuous falling radiation (house). But before actually entering and getting comfy in your shelter, you should tend to the particles that are possibly coating you currently. So without further ado, follow these fallout decontamination procedures.
1) Geiger Checks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geiger_counter
If you happen to be carrying around your trusty Geiger counter, you should check to see if you are currently registering a higher radiation activity then normal. What's normal? Not knowing normal can be a problem. If you can get a baseline background radiation level in your "safe" shelter that can then set a baseline that you should try to approach. Check your body, orifices and any wounds. Returning to this step after cycling through the actual decontamination procedures actually can help monitor your progress. Don't have a Geiger counter or any portable radiation detector? It's better to be safe then sorry. This fallout can spread hundreds of miles and persist for months. Proceeding to decontaminate even though you cannot be certain you are contaminated is a safe bet.
Secondly, you should strip, it can save your life. The majority of the fallout and dust tends to cling mostly to your clothing. The interesting fact of the day being, The US Department of Health statesthat removing all clothes after fallout can actually lower contamination and exposure by up to 90% (1).The correct procedure is to remove all clothing, starting from your head and moving downward. Ex) Hat, Jacket, Shirt, Pants...Etc. By following this guideline, all the loose dust that may be knocked off of higher articles will fall down on to subsequent layers that will too eventually be removed.
Any remaining particles can hopefully be removed from a good shower, outside if possible. Doing this allows the remaining radioactive water to remain outside of your shelter. The water should be lukewarm, neither hot nor cold. Cold water can close pores, causing anything trapped in the skin pores to remain that way. Hot water causes vasodilation (opening of the blood vessels). This increases absorption, which could cause an external problem to become a much more deadly internal risk. Use a mild soap. This soap should be soft on the skin, yet helpful to emulsify the dust/fallout leading to its removal. Just as before, washing should be done from top to bottom to make sure that contaminants are fully removed. An even better approach is to wash with strong water jets that can blast the water and dust away from your body allowing it not to run down your body and possibly collect. Hair should also be washed first with a neutral shampoo and no conditioner. Shampoo emulsifies while conditioner may aid in binding of the radioactive particles to hair follicles. External showering is best done in a way in which the remaining radioactive old shower water leaves the site and that the shower can be cleaned to the point that it doesn't remain radioactive. This is why slick plastic is often used in order for the particles to not stick to the shower, allowing for multiple uses.
4) Final Checks
Return to the Geiger counter step (if available) taking note of problem areas. Wash one more time and focus on these areas. If after checking with a Geiger counter for a third time there are still slightly elevated activity levels, this may be acceptable. Washing too many times can damage the skin, allowing for those external contaminants enter your internal body. Also these contaminants may be concentrated in the outer layers skin. Throughout the day, these external layers of skin will be shed along with the few contaminants left. For the clothes you removed, it is better to bag and throw these clothes away, along with all contaminants. But what if it's your favorite "I survived the bomb" outfit? In that case, going in with your trusty Geiger counter you can check if this outfit is at a salvageable level. If it is, a few runs through the washes may salvage your clothes. But is it truly worth the possible dose? Surviving the deadly dispersion after a nuclear bomb surely can take a lot of work, but it is manageable. Watch out for signs of Acute Radiation Sickness over the next few days such as nausea, diarrhea, and burns. Try to limit your exposure to the fallout by remaining in your shelter and possibly wearing a mask to keep the external dust, external. Waiting for assistance or possibly evacuating further away from the blast center are also important options.
Since I mused a little about my openings on the post I've gotta say this one was a lot better. I'm giving myself a pat on the back right now for my creative genius. You know that it was the cool title that lured you in here. It's okay you can admit it. Excuse my randomness. Sometimes I ramble to put a little bit of a break in between all the nuclear talk and blogging. Well getting back to it....
I found an interesting journal today that documents some of the atmospheric changes that have gone on from the more drastic nuclear accidents. Today, I thought it would be a good post to pass some of these facts to you and share at least some of the amazement I had at these facts about Fukushima.
Radionuclides from the reactor accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant were observed in the surface air at stations in Hanoi, Dalat, and Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) in Vietnam, about 4500 km southwest of Japan, during the period from March 27 to April 22, 2011. The maximum activity concentrations in the air measured at those three sites were 193, 33, and 37 μBq m−3 for 131I, 134Cs, and 137Cs, respectively. Peaks of radionuclide concentrations in the air corresponded to arrival of the air mass from Fukushima to Vietnam after traveling for 8 d over the Pacific Ocean. These effects of dispersion and overall travel of nuclear releases are effects that I feel are commonly forgotten. I believe that generally we as people tend to live our lives generally in bubbles, not paying attention to occurrences outside of our spheres of influence and things we notice in our daily lives. Yet readings like these definitely remind us that there is not an impassable wall between what happens in what area of the world another. These particulates did travel somewhere around 8 days to get to Vietnam, some 2500 miles away. These are definitely facts and things we should be concerned with as nuclear activists and I am sure many places have published other readings of increased level of nuclides drifting from far-off locations.
However, when critically assessing for that cancer chance in this particular scenario the results seem to be rather negligible. Just using that action level of 4 pCi/L from the radon example we can see that these values are much lower than what we should be worried about. Well, first we have to account for units which to convert micro bequerel to pCi is about a reduction or division by 1x10e5 (1 micoBq=.000027 pCi). Then to convert from 1 cubic meter to 1 liter reduces this number again by a factor of 1000. This results in readings somewhere around .00000193 pCi/L and less. Taking the EPA action level advice to be true, I would not worry too much about this particular situation. However, this does not change the fact that it is an important consideration on global impact nevertheless. It is impressive that radionuclides from this one even travelled this far. Also note that the graph above is integrated across a day it seems.
I cannot imagine what it would be like to end my career early after falling victim to the occupational hazards that one has accepted all their life. Life at that point must become a game of questions: Was the job worth it? Was there something you could have done differently? How will you work in the future? How will you pay for all the medical bills? How will you support the life that you have grown accustomed to living? Nuclear standards have received a poor reputation as being stringent, however, they truly seek to avoid putting anyone in this position described above. But yes, they also do seek to protect the employer as well, minimizing the amount of negative situations that occur and result in the paying of large sums of money.
When I first read about how cases in which occupational hazards pose a factor are handled, I was disheartened. It did seem like it would be another time when those in power, protected their power, with their power, resulting in the crushing of those not as fortunate. Most radiation corporations utilize a probability of causation calculation to assess their liability in these cases. As you know from earlier posts, we all have an inherent risk of developing cancer from natural sources. However, when we are exposed to radiation dose there is now a risk for radiation-induced cancer which is indistinguishable from cancer that would be naturally caused. Hearing this, I could just envision how big corporations could use this to weasel out of providing support for employees that got sick while working for them. They could state that the employee's developing disease probably fell under the employee's natural risk for cancer and that they are thus not liable. However, I know that personally I would feel horrible even if I had only a history of low dosage while working and still got cancer. I would probably beat myself up over how I could have avoided some of the rems and possibly had a different prognosis. So forced, then would come the lawsuits.... Generally, those with better legal representation have the advantage in court cases, and I imagine, against a large nuclear corporation, that legal battle would go horribly. However, as frightening as this all sounds, I have actually been pleasantly surprised by the information I have found on support provided by nuclear standards and compensation programs.
Using data I found from UK nuclear operations, I was able to explore more about compensation programs and dissuade my fears. They do use formulas and math to predict their liability, which they call an "Assigned Share". However, there are multiple generous factors worked into the calculation to lean towards favoring the employee. There are factors that consider your health and personal choices before the diagnosis. For example. if you have been a non-smoker that would increase their view on your prior personal health and increase the assigned share leading to a higher chance of payout. Dose records and estimates are calculated conservatively, in favor of the employee and those who's work results in cancer at a young age, under 50, also get a boost to their assigned share. All this gets factored and a decision can be made on whether there will be a settlement. Thus, the employee can avoid costly legal fees on top of everything else they are dealing. with. Yet litigation is still an option if this formula does not work out favorably for the employee. Probably the best reasoning for this compensation scheme is what they called "Proportional Recovery". Even if your assigned share is low due to a high chance of your cancer being due to natural risk, a business may pay out 50% or 25% of what they would in normal cases. It definitely is not perfect, but it would be better than nothing. If this occurred in court and the employee could not prove that his disorder was due to the occupational hazards than he would probably be going home with nothing else but the legal bills to pay for.With proportional recovery you have a higher chance of getting something. Most of the successful cases that the nuclear system in UK has dealt with has had a probability of causation of less than 50%, which is below the level that they would likely win in court. All in all, there probably still is room for improvement. But it is good to see that this system is working for many people and supporting our fellow nuclear workers who unluckily succumbed to the occupational hazards. As a future nuclear worker, its very important to know that I have these methods of support available.
Well, if you are still reading after that poorly planned attention-getter of a title and that frightening rhyme, I applaud your persistence and promise that I shall try to improve my rhetoric as we proceed down this post. It also probably comes as no surprise that today I'll be talking about radon and I'll hopefully pose some facts about it that you haven't heard of before.
Radon could be called a silent killer. I guess truthfully with it's method of killing its more dangerous in that it also can be seen or smelled. It is usually found as an elemental gas that is release from the soil into the atmosphere where it usually is at such low concentrations that it's "killing" effects are rather negligible. However, more often than not the Radon gets trapped in buildings, houses, basements, crawlspaces and such where it can collect and pool, growing to concentrations that are no longer negligible. As another side not, it could also be stated that the Radon gas is framed as the killer really. Due to its radioactivity, Radon slowly produces daughter nuclides that should actually be credited as the killers. These daughters are much more active than the Radon and release the particles that are very detrimental to our health. When the mixture of daughters and Radon is inhaled, the noble gas, Radon, is very likely to be easily and naturally exhaled. However, the daughters have a tendency to bind inside of our lungs and irradiate our insides, producing deadly alpha particles. These alpha particles increase our risk of respiratory cancers (such as lung cancer), even despite the fact that you have heeded my earlier post staying away from smoking in hopes of dodging this.
So what can be done to prevent the attack from Radon daughters?? Hopefully, you don't have to do anything. Radon gas naturally is part of our atmosphere in a low concentration. Hopefully, inside your home you have a comparably low concentration inside your home. One can perform radon testing inside one's house to test this against the EPA standard of being less than 4pCi/L. This is the EPA's action level, due to this exposure having stochastic effects there is no safe dose level. Interestingly this leads to the first big fact for this blog. (2)
After the EPA screened randomly they found that "nearly 1 in 3 homes checked in seven states and on three Indian lands had screening levels over 4 pCi/L, the EPA's recommended action level for radon exposure."(2)
But then what about the danger to these levels? Well the EPA also stated, "Most scientists agree that the risk of death for radon at 4 pCi/l is approximately 1 in 100. At the 4 pCi/l EPA action guideline level, radon carries approximately 1000 times the risk of death as any other EPA carcinogen." To even further put this into perspective a family living in such a house would receive a dose somewhere around 35 times the limit of what a nuclear waste site may release at the fence edge of this site. A nuclear engineer considers this 4pCi to be somewhere around 35 times what he thinks is reasonable to release from this nuclear waste itself. It is thus very important to get your new home tested for radon gas.(2)
If you do have high levels of radon gas there are certain procedures that can be done to lower these levels: Filtration, Ventilation, Pressurization, and Sealing. Filtration is not just simply running your air-purifier, in hopes of it removing both the dust and radioactive isotopes. Actually, for another interesting fact, this can actually increase your risk. Those daughter particles can bind to dust particles (attached state) or be free (unattached) and eventually bind to your lungs. Binding to both the dust particle and the inside of your lungs is harder for the radon daughters to do. If they do bind to your lungs you get localized exposure. Thus particles in the attached state are less dangerous than the unattached state. Running your air-purifier and cleaning up the dust does get rid of the dust and even some dust-daughter bound particles. However, after removing the dust, the unattached particles now will not become attached and are thus more dangerous.
Radon gas in dusty indoor areas is actually safer and has less risk than in clean non-dusty areas.(3)
Filtration actually uses a special carbon filter that traps the radon particles and then is flushed out in the outside air. Due to its relatively low efficiency it is best for low radon levels. Ventilation is rather self-explanatory. One needs to make sure that the radon can't collect in one area. By opening up the area you can have fresh air come in and the radon go out, lowering the concentration. Pressurization is a rather interesting approach. The radon is produced in the soil, under one's house. Normally, the gas pressure there rises and this pressure is relieved by it flowing upward into the home. However, pressurization can either work with this effect or against it. Using a fan, one can install what is essentially a straw of suction in a home that diverts, leading outside. As the pressure rises in the soil, the fan sucks and the gas goes up the straw and outside instead of inside the house. Another pressure option is to pressurize the house. This is sometimes not as effective. As the pressure in the soil rises, it is met by the raised pressure of the home itself. Because the pressure of the home is high the gas cannot flow into the high-pressure home. It must be released elsewhere and come out outside of the house. Finally, sealing is not always effective but is great in conjunction with previous methods. One attempt to seal off the home from the ground beneath it. This is done by caulking all the cracks and sealing the concrete and such. However, it is very hard to prevent a gas from entering an area, as it is near-impossible to make it perfectly air-tight. The gas from the soil would then be unable to enter.(1)
This was a long-winded exploration of radon and actually had more random facts than I was expecting. I guess the recommendation after this one is to definitely invest in a radon test. As always, thanks for reading and I hope I was able to keep your attention until the end. Thought I'd cap it off with a picture of FL and expected possible indoor radon levels from the EPA.(4)
This post will, I guess, work out to be another chip towards determining the superior sex. Women tend to be the winners of this battle based on today's random fact that men are overall, more susceptible to cancer (both radiation-induced and naturally occurring):
In the US, there is a 1 out of 5 lifetime mortality risk for males as compared to the females' risk of 1 out of 6 (1).
All jokes aside, these figures are definitely startling. Regardless of gender, these statistics are frighteningly high and neither gender is truly coming out victorious. But with this defined statistical significance in cancer prevalence and mortality differing between the sexes, I find it to be very interesting to explore some of the factors leading to this result.
It's common knowledge that there are differences between males and females, from social, behavioral, and to the physiological. All these factors could lead to occurrences that put one at a higher risk for developing cancer and the increased susceptibility as compared to the other sex. One major and lesser known difference is the female immune superiority.
Women actually have stronger immune systems. Scientists are studying to see the exact reasons for this, and have already pointed some of this to the X-chromosome. It seems that many immunoregulatory regions are located within the DNA of the X-chromosome. Just from women's increase in their number of this chromosome may benefit their total strength. Also hormonal differences (differing levels of estrogen, testosterone, and more) have defined impact on one's relative immune strength. They can affect the qualities and number of immune cells. Certain immune chemicals can have a negative impact on cancer cells, helping to prevent initiation. This makes it hard for cancer cells to even start growing. This is all besides the normal cell killing that immune cells try to do when they encounter abnormal, cancerous cells. With a strong immune system, these effects are amplified. Males are generally more likely to get cancer but there are a few types of cancer that are significantly more prevalent in females. One major type would be thyroid cancer, where increased estrogen levels may actually promote the cancer's proliferation and cause further progression. There also seem to be genetic differences (replication and repair activity) that are harder to directly correlate to cancer risk but seem to have a definite impact. All this leads to a significantly higher level of cancer in males. (2) (3)
Just to even the playing field and give men a chance in this losing battle of the sexes I will add in one more random fact. This superiority in immune system strength can lead to overactivity and women's higher risk for autoimmune disorders (Celiac Disease, Lupus, Rheumatoid Arthritis and more). It's definitely a losing scenario in either case. These factors affect one's natural risk cancer and when coupled with high or sustained radiation dose lead to the stochastic cancer risks which was originally posted above. Understanding your natural risk, helps to better understand how that is then modified by radiation dose.
Your Total Risk for cancer= Natural Risk * Dose Factor (Radiation leading to rad-induced cancer)
All in all, these numbers are definitely prompting a donation to a cancer research fund.
Cited:
(1) Shaw.Fundamentals of Nuclear Engineering.Text
(2) Dorak, M. T., & Karpuzoglu, E. (2012). Gender Differences in Cancer Susceptibility: An Inadequately Addressed Issue. Front. Genetics,2012(3), 268th ser. Retrieved February 11, 2016, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3508426/#__ffn_sectitle
(3)Oertelt-Prigione, S. (2012). The influence of sex and gender on the immune response. [Abstract]. Autoimmune Review,10, 1016th ser. Retrieved February 11, 2016, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22155201
