I said:
“And of course, potassium 40 is harmless to humans compared with radioactive cesium.”
You replied:
Not on a Bq to Bq comparison. K40 has much higher energy gammas than Cs137.
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That’s why all the dosimetry calculations I’ve had thrown in my face are wrong. K40 has much higher energy gammas than Cs137. And according to the EPA and other sources, “human tissues are relatively transparent” to higher energy gammas. This is the Grand Canyon in the calculations I’ve been seeing. One professor I had theorized that lower energy gammas do not pass through tissues one time, possibly missing the DNA strand all together - whereas lower energy gammas are thought to Richter around in tissues, passing multiple times through cells and therefore more likely to hit and damage DNA.
Look at the energy levels of uranium - low compared with K40, right? So the first thing the dosimetry calculations do is multiply quantity times energy and obliterate medical relevance from the rest of the equation.
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You said: The biggest factors are half-life of the isotope and biological half-life, so K40 washes out quickly and has a long half-life.
I say: This is wrong. Energy level is a huge issue as is where and how long the isotope is stored. Strontium is taken up in the bones in teeth and chelating or other efforts to remove it fail. Cesium collects in the muscles and the heart is a muscle, hence the relationship to cardiac death. No calculations capture the tendency of Strontium to collect in bones and irradiate bone marrow (leukemia). Isotope exposure suppresses immune response - no calculation has shown the relative amounts of immune response suppression among isotopes. That dosimetry calculation fails to take into account medical impact.
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You said:
but calculating body dose for a fish presents some math challenges.
I say: It’s generally done by sample the tissues of the fish. 5 months after Fukushima, a San Diego marine biologist finds trace amounts of Fukushima isotopes in 13 out of 13 fish sampled. Now, with continuous dumping into the ocean for another 2 years non-stop, and further concentration of the isotopes in the food chain, it’s not unreasonable to guess that the amounts in fish are increasing. And, the dumping into the ocean will not stop - it will continue unabated because no one knows how to stop it.
My typos corrected below:
“One professor I had theorized that lower energy gammas pass through tissues one time, possibly missing the DNA strand all together - whereas lower energy gammas are thought to ricochet around in tissues, passing multiple times through cells and therefore more likely to hit and damage DNA.”
Well, I’ve type it wrong twice in a row.
One last time - and then I’ll resort to drawing pictures if it’s still wrong. SOrry.
“One professor I had theorized that higher energy gammas pass through tissues one time, possibly missing the DNA strand all together - whereas lower energy gammas are thought to ricochet around in tissues, passing multiple times through cells and therefore more likely to hit and damage DNA.”
He likened it to a low speed bullet bouncing around inside a shooting victim and resulting in multiple trajectories through human tissue (i.e., the Regan assassination attempt; it wasn’t high caliber but it did alot of damage) whereas a bullet fired from a high caliber rifle would be expected to pass through the body one time (fewer trajectories).
So what were the levels that said "marine biologist" detected?? This is critical information for any realistic critical thinking about possible effects. Why has not that same "marine biologist" taken a second set of data at this later date??? If he had the tools and samples two years ago, he can surely scrape together the same stuff.
MY guess. He/she HAS taken the measurements and they show no increase over the first set of data. So, just like the non-publication of race of perpetrators in black-on-white violence, the second set of data will disappear, and the first set will continue to be blasted across media of all sorts to scare the ignorant public.