dose and cancer death risk
Posted by RalphWSiegler
on March 16, 2011, 11:13 am
12 miles from plant dose is 3.3 milliREM per hour, compared to the normal background of roughly 0.8 milliREM per day, so we're at 100X normal. Government telling them not to worry. Well, it's true that level won't make any detectable changes in body, but after a week you'll have picked up half a REM of dose (not millirems anymore!), and everyone's risk of death by cancer at that exposure level goes up 0.02% after a week, assuming no changes, and also assuming they took their KI tablets so not building anything into their body they'll have for years (that's another tale). 2 more deaths by cancer per 10,000 people than what would be normal, adding 2 more every week. This doesn't count the cancers that don't kill, that gets harder to nail down because of modern living causing so much anyway. For every REM of long term chronic exposure risk of death by cancer inches up a tad, about 0.04% per REM. This is assuming not ingesting anything bad, that's another story. This seems to hold true at even 100 RAD, with 4% increase in cancer death rates. But that changes when talking about a short term intense exposure. Like the workers at the plant when getting 10 REM an hour. After one hour, getting 10 REM of dose, their risk of death by cancer goes up 0.8% And when talking about 80 REM and up, there is tissue and organ damage that start to become more of a worry in the near term than cancer in the far term.
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