Paranoid 'nuclear' frenzy in full swing.
It's amazing what people will get worked up over, and how much the media will encourage them to do it.
Consider the headlines about 'Water in Tokyo Unsafe for Babies!'.
Well, not really. First, limits for radiation exposure are *very* conservative. Then, the limits for radiation in things like food or water assume you are consuming the stuff for a year. What they are getting wrought up about is radioactive iodine, which has a half-life of 8 days. And the radiation limit is exceeded by only about 10%. You could take the water, bottle it, wait 8 days, and drink it indefinitely, because then it would be at 55% of the permissible level. But the reactors are shut down, and the iodine is committing self-deletion at the rate of half the amount every 8 days... so these levels won't be maintained for months, let alone a year... so you could safely drink the water, feed it to babies, etc.... all with no problem. For that matter, if you are breast feeding, you should be able to do a calculation about the average delay of water and radiation products in the mother's body. Remember that the water is still considered safe for adults. The delay involved would guarantee (short half life, again) that with a breast feeding mother drinking the water, breast milk would be safe.
But panic sells more papers....
Consider the headlines about 'Water in Tokyo Unsafe for Babies!'.
Well, not really. First, limits for radiation exposure are *very* conservative. Then, the limits for radiation in things like food or water assume you are consuming the stuff for a year. What they are getting wrought up about is radioactive iodine, which has a half-life of 8 days. And the radiation limit is exceeded by only about 10%. You could take the water, bottle it, wait 8 days, and drink it indefinitely, because then it would be at 55% of the permissible level. But the reactors are shut down, and the iodine is committing self-deletion at the rate of half the amount every 8 days... so these levels won't be maintained for months, let alone a year... so you could safely drink the water, feed it to babies, etc.... all with no problem. For that matter, if you are breast feeding, you should be able to do a calculation about the average delay of water and radiation products in the mother's body. Remember that the water is still considered safe for adults. The delay involved would guarantee (short half life, again) that with a breast feeding mother drinking the water, breast milk would be safe.
But panic sells more papers....