All Radiation Is NOT the Same

The unfolding disaster in Japan has caused a long-time debate about the effects of radiation to resurface.  The nuclear industry is quick to tell you that any exposure to the radiation leaking from Fukushima is less than what you receive from a dental x-ray or an airplane flight to Colorado.  This is incorrect and disingenuous in so many ways.

Radiation represents the perfect crime.  Except for Thyroid cancer, which is often the result of exposure to radioactive Iodine, you can rarely trace a case of cancer definitively back to exposure to radiation.  You can assume some cancers from cancer radiation treatment, or, in the case of Japan, workers with high doses, but, for average people, there is no way to tell what caused their blood cancer, their leukemia, their liver, pancreatic or breast cancer.  All we know is that cancer rates keep rising and younger and younger people keep developing it.

Gamma radiation from the sun is something humans have evolved to withstand.  Except in extreme environments or extreme exposure, most people can tolerate the sun.  The kind of radiation leaking from Fukushima is NOT this kind of radiation.  These different, man-made alpha and beta particles, once breathed or ingested, stay in the body, irradiating it until they decay or are expelled from the body.  They bombard nearby cells, setting off the cancer growth process.  No level of Cesium 137, Iodine 131, Strontium 90 or other radionuclides being released from Fukushima are safe.  People will be harmed; we just won't know who and how badly.  Some will die.  Others will pass damaged genetic materials on to their children if they are of child rearing age.  Children will develop leukemia and/or other childhood cancers, but we won't know why.  Radiation truly represents the perfect crime.

The disaster at Fukushima has fallen out of media coverage . . . there is virtually no attention being paid at this time even though terrible things continue to happen with the reactors, and the spent fuel pools . . . and massive releases are ongoing . . . releases that are circling the globe, coming down in rainwater, getting into the milk and drinking water and contaminating fish.  Yes, there may be no immediate threat . .. but that's the insidious nature of radiation induced cancer, isn't it?  You just don't know when that perfect crime will be committed.