Shock as sardines vanish off California - the entire Pacific coast - NOAA: We don’t know why

[paleotn]

48. Seems reading comprehension....

...isn't one of your strong suites. The amount of background radiation received by simply eating, drinking, breathing and just walking around is relatively small, but so is the radiation received in the US from Fukushima via air, seawater, fish etc., simply because of the size of the accident and its distance from the US. THAT'S my point that you apparently don't get!

You're surrounded by ionizing radiation by simply living. Even from the the number of BEDs (banana equivalent doses) we're exposed to annually. Yes, a BED is a bit of a joke, but all of the amounts of ionizing radiation we're exposed to per year adds up. The average amount of radiation found in bananas is around 3,520 pCi / kg, mostly in the form of beta particles produced by the decay of K-40. That's a very, very tiny amount per banana, but does tend to send the worriers and the unbalanced into hysterics, thus its use by those of us who like to point and laugh at the hysterical.

http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/natural.htm

Though also tiny, our own bodies contain ionizing radiation sources withing our organic molecules, K-40 being one of them. C-14, as a tiny % of the carbon in every one of your cell's DNA, being another. That's right, a tiny portion of our own carbon atoms are magically decaying into nitrogen 14, and within our own DNA for god's sake! Scared yet?

The vast majority of the natural annual radiation dose received by every single American is from geologic sources (radon) and medical procedures, around 5.5 mSv per year. As a reference, just those two sources are vastly higher than anything we in the continental US will receive from Fukushima in a year. How am I so certain? Because we've been down this road once before. Chernobyl. Terrible for the Ukraine and parts of central Europe, but had no measurable affect on North America.

Fukushima will change life for the worse in Japan for many years to come. That underscores the fact that nuclear power should be curtailed since when things do go wrong, they go horribly wrong. However, going bonkers in the western US about radiation problems that simply don't exist doesn't help matters. It tends to paint all of us anti-nukes as nuts.