“Radioactive” Baby Formula Recalled: Contained Less Radiation Than A Banana

It’s not relevant here either. You’re comparing apples and oranges. “Ludicrously small” is also probably an exaggeration. I’m curious too about your calculation. I’m not saying that the radioactive baby formula in this case is dangerous but just at a glance it looks like consuming the baby formula is much worse than consuming a banana.
Let’s say we have 1kg of bananas in a month and 1kg of this baby formula in a month. (I don’t know if this is realistic, just using the figures above.) Assuming you only eat one banana at a time this would mean that you would have 15bq of potassium radiation 9 times a month for about 3 hours for each banana. So 27 hours in the month you will have 15bq of radiation.Next, look at the baby formula. I’m guessing you don’t have children but you can probably understand that for babies who aren’t breastfeeding, the absolute minimum number of feedings in day is 3. More likely much more. But we will go with 3 here. This would mean that the baby will have 22-31bq of cesium radiation at least 3 times a day for several weeks or months.I know the calculation is crude but negligible (a much more objective than “ludicrously small”) as it may be it seems that there is a huge difference.As I said, apples and oranges. Why propagate the myth that you can compare the potassium radiation with cesium radiation when you could have simple said that it likely does not pose a risk to human health?BTW, adding water may dilute the formula but will not decrease the amount of radiation you consume. I spoon of formula has the same amount of radiation as one spoon of formula with water. Simple logic. 

Meiji had plenty of choices in this matter.  They just happened to make the most appropriate one in line with the target market of their baby formula.  Their decision to do so was directly influenced by consumer opinion, but it wasn’t forced.

What you refer to as ‘a different angle’ is a nuance that I’m emphasizing.

I’m skeptical, especially when it comes to estimates and guesses.

“there’s no immediate health risk” 

Wasn’t that statement meant to emphasize that the amounts of contamination would be dangerous if people were subjected to them for a long period of time – building up cumulative exposure? 

It’s a bad wording, unfortunately, because it makes people think that exposure to tiny amounts of radiation will have long-term health risks- when in fact there is no reasonable reason to believe that is so.

“there’s no way there can be a meltdown”

No chance of a meltdown?  On March 12th, authorities were announcing a high probability of fuel melting:

“Japanese nuclear authorities said that there was a high possibility that nuclear fuel rods at a reactor at Tokyo Electric Power’s Daiichi plant may be melting or have melted”

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/12/uk-japan-quake-melting-idUSTRE72B0U020110312

They avoided use of the exact term “meltdown” – but when fuel melts, that is exactly what it is.

It’ll be a long time before we have the full story about the damage.  Even now, they’re still working with estimates because radiation inside the buildings is still at deadly levels.

plutonium can’t fly far

Reasonably speaking, that is true.  But as nuclear tests throughout the 20th century showed, trace amounts of plutonium (far below levels proven to be dangerous) can fly.  Thanks to those nuclear weapons, there is plutonium all around us.  But the amount is not high, and the amounts scatted by Fukushima haven’t been high either.

how is that different from you pushing the argument that it is safe, even though nobody has proven that either?

This isn’t unexplored territory.  Scientists have been studying the impact of radiation in the human body for over half a century.  There are levels of radiation exposure have been proven to be harmful, and levels that have not been proven to be harmful.

It’s hard to prove that something is safe – one can only really conduct study after study, as researchers have done, and try to determine if it is dangerous.  And if a lot of research has been conducted and danger has not been found, there comes a point where one can reasonably treat something as not dangerous.  And we’re at such a point here.

The BED is not perfect – but it can still be useful.  The l
inked BoingBoing post mentions how it is not good to compare potassium to iodine – and that’s a fair statement.  As I linked in the post, organizations such as the CDC (not a nuclear propaganda agency) think it is very relevant to mention potassium when educating the public about cesium.

Quote of jizo
“please show me where i said that things be proven completely safe. ”

Quote of jizo
“can you show me conclusive scientific evidence that radioactive cesium even at low levels is completely safe for the body”

Request fulfilled.

Quote from jizo
“primary source of that is k-40, BUT [emphasis: Level3] the vast majority of the beta particles that are emitted by the k-40 don’t escape the body”

It’s quotes like these that make me think you don’t really understand the info that you’re linking to. Why use the word “BUT” in the sentence above?

Beta particles are a form of ionizing radiation (that kind of radiation that screws up your body chemistry). If the particles do not escape the body, as you noted, they must therefore be intercepted by the body (i.e. the beta particles impact cells in the body) Meaning basically, most of the ionizing radiaiton from K-40 does not escape the body, yet the body is full of 3500Bq or more that is hitting cells in your body, potentially damaging the DNA. Thus, this can at least be accepted as the tolerable amount of internal radiation exposure, if you’re being at all rational.  Your body DOES have repair mechanisms to counteract ionizing radiation, otherwise everyone would die of radiation sickness from exposure to themselves. The capacity of those repair mechanisms is up for debate, but there doesn’t seem to be any research showing that people in areas with elevated background radiaiton, or people in cultures with high banana consumption, have more cancer, etc. (Is there?)

If cesium stays in the body longer than potassium (same group in the periodic table, similar chemical reactions, maybe different rates) then how much cesium is tolerable depends on the how much longer the cesium is stuck, and how much cesium there is.

Thus it becomes a simple math problem with 3 variables.

1. the ratio between the residence time of K-40 and cesium in the body
2  the ratio of the amount of cesium to K-40
3  the “acceptable” increase in exposure due to the cesium

I’ll take the acceptable rate as doing nothing worse than the increased exposure if you eat bananas. Unless there is some study showing otherwise, I’ll assume 1 banana a day as acceptable (the “Banana diet” fad in Japan a couple years back generated no cries of alarm about radiation) A banana has about 15Bq

The studies james cited above says the biological half-life of K-40 is 30 days and cesium is 70 days. So we do a simple exponential decay to find how many BQ are remaining each day from the initial dose (ID)

BQ = ID * (1/2)^(days/half-life)

And to get the whole picture, we carry out the math for 1000 days!
Then compare the sum of the areas under the 2 curves.
And we find that the net effect of a Bq of cesium consumed is 2.27 times that of an equal amount of K-40.
Do the math again to find what the equivalent dose is, and we find that 4.7 Bq of cesium consumed is the equivalent of a typical banana with 15Bq.

This baby formula had at most 31Bq in a whole kg of the powder!
Thus, at worst, the equivalent of just over 6 bananas in total, divided over however long it takes to use 1 kg of powdered formula.

Conclusion:
If this justifies a product recall, bananas should also be banned. Go protest at your local supermarket to save the children.

But at least give me time to enjoy one last banana split before it’s too late.

quote jizo
“uhhh, no. i asked if you had evidence that shows that low dose radiation
is completely safe (which it appears you don’t) which is not the same
as demanding that every single product in the world be proven completely
safe”

Oh, so you were only demanding that things the news tells you to panic about be perfectly safe. But things whose inherent risk you choose not to think about are OK.
Sorry for the misunderstanding.

sigh

What do you define as “low dose radiation”? I’ll assume you mean to say “elevated above background levels or levels normally found in food”.

This is the fundamental issue. If the exposure is the same as background (as in this case, as the math has shown) then it is irrational to panic. Especially considering that stressing out carries its own risks. (There’s a PhD thesis that some grad student in Tokyo will probably be able to write in 10 years “Stress-induced Health Problems in Areas of Japan not Physically Affected by the Tohoku Tsunami nor Fukushima Fallout”)

Now, what is the borderline at which elevated radiation starts to cause health problems? Yes, that is a matter of continuing research. (That areas with high background radiation show no spike in cancers, etc. at least hints that the threshold is not as low as the threshold that sparks panic in scientifically illiterate parents, and the neo-Luddite activists who prod them.)

Now, there are some who claim that cancers are (in part) the result of background radiation itself, and thus, if we could somehow rid the world (and our bodies) of all radioactive substances (and shield the planet from all radiation from space, including from the Sun), the cancer rate would drop. A legitimate theory. But impossible to put in practice. Is this the point you’re angling for?

Anyway, in cases where food is shown to clearly be well above background, I WILL AGREE WITH YOU, there should be monitoring and even bans. This is not such a case.
If there are studies that show cesium gets trapped in the body much, much longer than K-40, I WILL CHANGE MY MIND.
Can you say the same? Or will you always claim there needs to be more research, just in case. Never satisfied? That is the definition of closed-mindedness.

But there has to be some sort of standard. And no, the “zero tolerance” standard is no good. It is irrational and impossible. It also has the danger of becoming a Boy Who Cried Wolf problem, and that doesn’t help anyone.

No ,you aren’t an anti-nuclear activist.
I live in Japan and I can do simple math.
You ignore it.

The formula already has 250Bq/kg from the potassium in it.
You are flipping out over an extra 25Bq.
And when we account for the longer biological half-life of the cesium vs. potassium (cesium yielding about double the exposure) , it is still the same as eating 6 bananas over the time it takes to use 1 kilo of this powder.

All the mothers who have mixed the formula a little thick, or fed her baby an extra bottle every now and then over all these decades has been exposing her child to far more food-borne radiation than what led to this recall. Yet there are no alarmist calls for strict monitoring of feeding technique.

Case closed.
I win.

And ask yourself, if you think people like me have some sort of agenda, perhaps people who are writing the alarmist stuff you trust ALSO have their own agenda. There are plenty of organizations who have anti-nuclear, anti-corporate, anti-technology views. Perhaps, just perhaps, they are responsible for some of the news sources you are trusting?

Think about it.