Japan Earthquake

Japan Earthquake | Page 1798

@Nancy @Pedro Thanks! Big mistake on the Today Show. They specifically said nuclear.
by LM 6/30/2011 3:15:29 PM

@LM Wow. They should know better. Yesterday the Lincoln NE ABC affiliate mistakenly announced Ft. Calhoun ordered a 10 mile evacuation.
by Nancy 6/30/2011 3:17:03 PM

@Edano, about that quote, yeah, I'm mystified too! ???!
by Ian 6/30/2011 3:17:37 PM

@Nancy Yeah..very irresponsible reporting!
by LM 6/30/2011 3:18:19 PM

@LM then other news sources blame the internet for all the misinformation. There are people purposely pushing misinformation but really? The WHOLE internet? The last two pieces of bad information I have seen came from US well known media outlets.
by Nancy 6/30/2011 3:19:42 PM

@LM @Nancy That's why it's good that we keep our eyes open and cross check information all the time. It's evident that our amateur effort here can outperform professional news agencies. =)
by Pedro Jesus 6/30/2011 3:20:09 PM

@Peter, yes, you were correct to point that out! The wiki entry isn't to well written.
by Ian 6/30/2011 3:20:32 PM

@Pedro Jesus TRUE THAT!
by Panserbjorne9 6/30/2011 3:22:06 PM

By the way, by amateur, I meant in a journalistic sense. I was not referring to the highly professional technical knowledge of some of my scribble mates.
by Pedro Jesus 6/30/2011 3:24:22 PM

@Nancy yes, the whole internet apparently needs a time-out. bad interwebs, bad.
by Panserbjorne9 6/30/2011 3:25:18 PM

@Edano , they seem to use half-life as a measure of the rapidity of elimination of the isotope. In the case of Cs, there seems to be two compartments in the body that turn the isotope over at different rates. This is not uncommon. In the lab we plotted the counts against the log of time to linearize the plot. The slope of the straight line represents the half-life. If the line was still curved, we fitted straight lines to the steep part and the gently-sloping part separately and used the slopes as half-life for each compartment.
by Peter Melzer 6/30/2011 3:25:43 PM

Off to bed all. Ashita mata.
by bo 6/30/2011 3:26:24 PM

@Nancy @Pedro You are both so right! Thank you for dispelling the internet myth!
by LM 6/30/2011 3:27:19 PM

Nite Bo!
by LM 6/30/2011 3:27:30 PM

This is the news article that really annoyed me, blanket blaming the internet for all the bad information and hysteria. www.desmoinesregister.com
by Nancy 6/30/2011 3:28:46 PM

nite bo!
by Nancy 6/30/2011 3:28:51 PM

@Nancy "Unfortunately, that's exactly what is happening online where anything goes" ecx.images-amazon.com
by Panserbjorne9 via Ecx.images-amazon 6/30/2011 3:31:54 PM

mods can remove, i know it takes up space. just couldn't help it for a sec. :)
by Panserbjorne9 6/30/2011 3:32:27 PM

Japan braces itself for hottest summer on record
Japan is bracing itself for the hottest summer on record, leading to fears that thousands of people will die as the government limits the use of air conditioning.
www.telegraph.co.uk
by Panserbjorne9 6/30/2011 3:33:35 PM

i know it's not news, but the picture with the article is arresting. Trace amounts of radioactive materials found in Fukushima kids' urine mdn.mainichi.jp
by Panserbjorne9 6/30/2011 3:38:43 PM

This study of inhaled cs137 cites three phases of elimination, each given a half life : janus.northwestern.edu
by Ian 6/30/2011 3:39:39 PM

cited in the abstract, second-to-last paragraph on page i
by Ian 6/30/2011 3:40:49 PM

@Peter Melzer : i agree and understand that, but still ..... all compartments are connected by blood vessels, so there must be a steady state between all of them, and an overall half life that comes close to a hyperbel.
by Edano 6/30/2011 3:49:15 PM

There is no reason to expect that biological excretion of radioactive material should follow the same curve as the decay of isotopes themselves, so the idea of biological half-life is flawed.
by Bobby1 6/30/2011 3:51:41 PM

@Nancy That article is biased towards nuclear but they do have a point there. Misinformation is a reality and we have seen lots of proof of it.
by Pedro Jesus 6/30/2011 3:54:15 PM

@Bobby1 bioelimination is mathematically the same as radiodecay. the elimination is generally constant. same time, same percentage.
by Edano 6/30/2011 3:57:00 PM

@Edano & Peter, isn't it the case that a bio-half-life measure refers to eliminating a single exposure, ie, half of a single dose is eliminated in x time. This is important because exposures are more likely to be prolonged (e.g., every drink, meal or breath), and this where where you'd get increasing build ups in isotope-selective tissues even if you're getting the same dose per exposure.
by Ian 6/30/2011 3:57:16 PM

@Ian : this is correct.
by Edano 6/30/2011 3:58:20 PM

it is called pharmacokinetics.
by Edano 6/30/2011 3:58:54 PM

@Edano I wouldn't say they're the same; radioactive decay is extremely accurate regardless of the medium whereas biological decay is highly affected by hundreds of variables. There's a lot of unpredictability in biological phenomena.
by Pedro Jesus 6/30/2011 4:02:22 PM

@Edano That has to be established empirically, and for all age groups and other subgroups. Just because the radiation load falls by 50% in X days does not necessarily mean it will fall another 50% after another X days.
by Bobby1 6/30/2011 4:02:33 PM

@Bobby1 , of course radioactive decay figures. The shorter the radioactive half-life, the heavier that influence ways. @Ian, yes, my descriptions were based on a single dose. Constant administration changes the amounts accumulated, but not the kinetics of elimination.
by Peter Melzer 6/30/2011 4:03:33 PM

FACTBOX-Details on Japan's 19 active nuclear reactors af.reuters.com
by Panserbjorne9 6/30/2011 4:07:45 PM

i think there are two different things mixed up. radioactive decay and biological elimination. there is not such a thing as "biological decay".
by Edano 6/30/2011 4:08:33 PM

@Edano , I think so, too. Only we were more interested in the slow elimination rates because they would dominate elimination with progressing time. That was an effect we wished to avoid.
by Peter Melzer 6/30/2011 4:10:16 PM

@Edano Biological elimination is the right expression. Or Biodegradation or biotic degradation or biotic decomposition in other context different from what you have been discussing. But all of the former incomparable to radioactive decay. Isotope radioactive decay is nearly the same anywhere in the universe.
by Pedro Jesus 6/30/2011 4:12:10 PM

@Edano sure there is, in medicine. not re: radioactivity is what you mean
by Panserbjorne9 6/30/2011 4:12:30 PM

Bio-elimination can be affected by things as simple as whether you drink a lot of tea or coffee, and then whether you compensate by drinking a lot of water and replenishing your potassium. We all eliminate wastes at a level consistent with the efficiency of our digestive and urinary tracts.
by RadioGuy 6/30/2011 4:14:51 PM

@bobby1: sorry, weighs=ways.
by Peter Melzer 6/30/2011 4:14:53 PM

I think that may be where they get tha 10% with a short "half-life". It's probably the portion that never makes it our of easily flushed tissues or the bloodstream or the digestive system.
by RadioGuy 6/30/2011 4:17:54 PM

well, now definitely everything is mixed up ;)
by Edano 6/30/2011 4:18:18 PM

@Edano It doesn't help when the people reporting have every vested interest to gain by making the confusion worse rather than clearer.
by RadioGuy 6/30/2011 4:19:46 PM

@RadioGuy, true, for cations and anions in salts for sure. Gases may be exhaled. Other radionuclides may pass through the g.i. tract. Organic compounds may be oxidized in the liver and bound to sugars to increase their solubility in water and are then excreted.
by Peter Melzer 6/30/2011 4:20:46 PM

@RadioGuy reminds me of back in march when everywhere you looked people were mixing up grays, rads, curies, rems, uSv, mSv, and Sv. Sometimes in the same paragraphs.
by Panserbjorne9 6/30/2011 4:21:52 PM

@radioguy, but consider if the substance is bound in bone matrix for example, the turnover in the bone is going to govern the elimination rate.
by Peter Melzer 6/30/2011 4:23:31 PM