UBC physicist unconcerned about West Coast radiation increase due to Japan nuclear disaster
A health physicist at UBC’s TRIUMF laboratory believes radiation from Japan’s nuclear disaster reached Canadian shores and raised measured levels of radioactivity in March, but that those levels were lower than what we’re already exposed to through “natural background”.
“Natural background has several different components to it,” Anne Trudel told the Straight by phone. “There are cosmic rays that rain down on us from the outer universe. And as well, there is naturally occurring radioactivity in rock and in the Earth’s crust. And so that contributes to those, as well as radioactivity that is present in some of the foods that we consume. So, that’s like the potassium-40 that’s in milk, or some carbon-14 in vegetation. There’s potassium-40 in a lot of different foods.”
Trudel made these comments after the CounterPunch website ran an article claiming measured radiation levels in U.S. Pacific Northwest rains were up to 130 times the U.S. safe drinking water standard in the wake of the Fukushima crisis.
However, Trudel said she could not see any reason to be concerned in Vancouver.
Trudel noted that SFU nuclear scientist Kris Starosta and his research team had earlier tested local rainwater they’d collected at SFU’s campus on Burnaby Mountain and in downtown Vancouver. The team sampled seaweed collected in North Vancouver near the SeaBus terminal.
According to SFU’s March 28 release on the research findings, researchers began monitoring rainwater earlier that month, but did not see the signature for iodine-131 in samples taken on March 16 and March 18.
However, they did detect the radioisotope’s signature in samples from March 19, 20, and 25. Starosta said at the time that there was no threat to the public.
“As of now, the levels we’re seeing are not harmful to humans,” Starosta said in the release. “We’re basing this on Japanese studies following the Chernobyl incident in 1986 where levels of iodine-131 were four times higher than what we’ve detected in our rainwater so far.”
Fortunately, local scientists like Trudel and those at SFU have the capability to measure radioactivity at sensitive levels.
“That’s good for us,” Trudel said. “We’re in the field and doing the work we need to do. But the level at which it becomes a hazard to people’s health is thousands of times greater than what we can measure at.”
Comments
16 Comments
OldGeek
Jul 15, 2011 at 5:15pm
General, average, background levels are a bit different from hot particles. We've all breathed in a few dozen (atomic-sized) pieces of plutonium since the accident.
Please feel free to see the following for more interesting information:
For hot particle health information, early damage assessments, etc = http://fairewinds.com/updates
Nuke info from the MIT crowd = http://mitnse.com/
USA govt info = http://blog.energy.gov/content/situation-japan/
There is no safe low limit for human health; any amount of radiation causes damage. Perhaps Dr Trudel could provide more detailed interpretation and guidance in view of the other Fukushima damage coming to light now. If only a tenth of a percent of the fuel rod debris vapourized per day continuously, what sort of health implications might that have? Any estimates of aerial particles and how many kilos of plutonium may have made its way into our atmosphere up to now? And please precisely define "safe"...
monty/that's me
Jul 16, 2011 at 12:14am
Perhaps before sharing their "wisdom" these folks could have contacted the Homeland Security Department which immediately set up security systems in Portland, San Diego, Los Angeles and elsewhere to monitor the increased radiation on containers and in the water following the trouble in Japan. Japanese media have reported numerous incidents where the public was misled by dishonest statements about this entire incident.
Canada acting as usual with head in the sand naivete had no monitors of any kind here on the west coast. Yet radioactive seaweed was found in Deep Cove.
RonS
Jul 17, 2011 at 7:30am
More spin from the "experts". They have shown in the past to totally unreliable and will spin it anyway to protect their government grants.
Canadian
Jul 17, 2011 at 11:00am
Yet another reason to Drink MORE RED WINE :)
Bruce Conway
Jul 17, 2011 at 3:51pm
I wonder why it seems always convenient to keep repeating that background levels are safe when the internal hot particle count for April-May was anything but.
Additionally, no levels are safe. This is just a ploy used by the nuclear industry to keep doing their dirty deeds. With four reactors continually emitting dangerous levels of radiation that are carried in our Jet Stream and across to the West Coast, we can longer call the bio-accululation of these particles safe. Background radiation from Fukushima is a different composition and contains many more isotopes than the background radiation of the 50's and 60's. Add this to Chernobyl, the 75% of U.S. nuclear reactors found by AP to be intermittently leaking tritium, the over 2,000 nuclear tests done in the 60's, the equivalent of 2,000 [500 kiloton] atomic bombs that have spewed out from Fukushima and the DU radiation detected all over Europe to the existing cancer epidemic and I think we should reconsider exactly what we are doing with these plants.
J-BC
Jul 17, 2011 at 4:34pm
I think you need your geek card revoked OldGeek. I can hardly claim full geek status, and yet, your arguments are refutable. For starters the true low-limit is an unknown approximation, however, that's no reason to assume it's catastrophic. Hot particles? what scaremongering crap. I swear peoples brains fall out as soon as the word Nuclear is mentioned. You do realize that you breathe them in anyway thanks to Coal burning and Volcanoes? This is no Chernobyl incident. Nuclear isn't perfect, but we've a long way to go to replace it with greenish alternatives.
OldGeek
Jul 18, 2011 at 8:30am
Re: J-BC
Nice to know that coal and volcanos are perfectly safe, and that minor health effects are the same as zero effects.
Do volcanos and coal-based generation cause mass evacuations or experience catastrophic failure?
Ever hear of thorium reactors? Why don't we use them instead?
Eat any good comics lately?
Rolef Ohlroggen
Jul 18, 2011 at 9:23am
Who in Vancouver besides UBC is there that can give us the straight talk on Radiation? http://www.9news.com/news/article/207689/188/Rainwater-radiation-linked-...
Shakira
Jul 18, 2011 at 10:31am
The University of Berkeley has been doing testing of air, food and soil samples since the catastrophe. They have an ongoing forum that's very informative:
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/forum/218
J-BC
Jul 18, 2011 at 1:59pm
OldGeek, I don't expect much of anything is "perfectly safe". however, I have a lot more to fear from domesticated carcinogens or the next driver on the road than Nuclear threat or a couple errant particles more than I already get, or minor, temporary, increases in background radiation (which has existed since long before the evolution of Humans). Hell, I even plan on going to Tokyo.
Thorium Reactors are indeed interesting but my understanding is that the technology to make them efficient was simply not practical in their infancy and they pose a, yet inconclusive, potential for the future. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_reactor#Disadvantages_as_nuclear_fuel
Sadly, as mentioned above, a major "disadvantage" to Thorium is its difficulty for use in Nuclear weapons. Since the existing Nuclear infrastructure was developed during the cold war, there was no political will to invest in Thorium. So as to why don't we use them? Wwell, we probably will, but the current state of "fear everything Nuclear" makes it hard to pursue the better options. In the end, China will do it for us because they don't care
There are also potentials in the pebble bed designs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactors) and our homegrown CANDU reactors are rated rather highly.
And finally, yes, volcanoes do cause mass evacuations and Coal plants cause *many times more* long-term health effects to more people than Nuclear.