AnnCoulter says Radiation is good for you

[faethor]

There are three facets to radiation doses: time, distance and intensity of exposure. If the dose is low enough, or the distance is high enough, the other two become irrelevant.

The half-life of iodine-131 is slightly over 8 days

If Coulter doesn't get there soon she'll miss the radiation. Her 'more' is better attitude only has a few days left.

Half life is the # of days for half of the nuclei to decay. In 8 days the 10K times is reduced to 5K times (half). If my math is correct the recommended safe dose will be reached in about 3 and half months, we could say 4 for a bit of safety.

in 6 half lives (48 days) it has decayed to 1/64th of original intensity
in 7 half lives (56 days) it has decayed to 1/128th
in 8 half lives (64 days) it has decayed to 1/256th

The pollution was claimed to be 10K times above the acceptable level. 10,000/256 means in 64 days it's now 39x higher than the acceptable level. Ratio in 2 months is no longer 10,000:1 but 39:1. So in 72 days it's 1/512th... Yeah so my 3 and 1/2 months seems to be spot on. Thank you.

"These porous paper envelopes, containing a mixture of sulfur and clay (kaolin), are distributed by the Yuze Hotel in Japan, located at a hot mineral spring reputed to have therapeutic properties. Radioactive Thorium is in high concentration in the kaolin clay. These packets are added to warm bathing water to give the benefits of a Radioactive mineral water (onsen) bath in the home"

Interesting but not unexpected. People believe the craziest things all the time. Lead was argued as a good thing and now it's basically banned from kids toys. Need we mention the goodness of Homopathic remedies which are diluted chemicals which often didn't work at original strenght and now are expected when when the water has 'memory' of containing them.

Go back to earlier in the thread. We see a discussion indicating how ionizing radiation destroys DNA. The body responds to heal. Radiation doesn't promote health it only destroys. And certainly Coulter's idea that therefore more must be better is simply wrong. 1 aspirin helps you but take 5 bottless and death is the likely outcome. As you said there are effects based on exposure and amount.

 

[cecilia]

why isn't Coulter running off to Japan and jumping into the water surrounding those healthy rods???

why why why

doesn't she believe her own stories????


and she should take cheney with her because he's looking poorly. it will do them both good

yes it will :mrgreen:

 

[metalman]

1 aspirin helps you but take 5 bottless and death is the likely outcome. As you said there are effects based on exposure and amount.

people commit suicide by aspirin poisoning, 100 mg/kg of body mass is a critical overdose, extremely painfully way to die.

Water poisoning is also common, drink 3 gallons in 1 hr.

Lots of minerals are needed by the body in trace amounts that are poisonous in larger amounts, you can poison yourself just buy taking too many multi-vitamin tablets.


The dangers of high-dose radiation do not apply to low-dose radiation. The body responds very differently to low doses of radiation than high doses.

 

[faethor]

1 aspirin helps you but take 5 bottless and death is the likely outcome. As you said there are effects based on exposure and amount.

people commit suicide by aspirin poisoning, 100 mg/kg of body mass is a critical overdose, extremely painfully way to die.

Water poisoning is also common, drink 3 gallons in 1 hr.

Lots of minerals are needed by the body in trace amounts that are poisonous in larger amounts, you can poison yourself just buy taking too many multi-vitamin tablets.

The dangers of high-dose radiation do not apply to low-dose radiation. The body responds very differently to low doses of radiation than high doses.

I think drowning is more common than water poisoning. Though from what I understand long distance runners can be succeptable by accidentally die by drinking too much water after an event.

The difference between high-dose radiation and low-dose radiation is size of the effect. Ionizing radiation breaks DNA chains. This kicks the body into repair. Too many broken chains (higher the dose and exposure) and the body is unable to adequately repair itself in time. Breaking DNA strands is considered not a good thing as this increases chance of mutations which can lead to cancer.

Since the activity of the body is within norms it's fairly hard to say low-dose radiation is an improvement (such as Coulter did). Coulter's statements have no definitive research backing them up. At present the signal to noise ratio is too high to make a conclusion. But hey why not promote it as good right?!


When I see nuclear scientists lining their shirt pockets with radioactive material and living longer than the rest of us. Let's talk.

 

[Glaucus]

The dangers of high-dose radiation do not apply to low-dose radiation. The body responds very differently to low doses of radiation than high doses.

You're right, but like I said in an earlier post, this is all kinda useless when in the context of a nuclear metldown. Why is that? Because there's more to a nuclear meltdown then just a little bit of extra radiation. There are also alpha and beta particles. If a full scale meltdown occurs and the containment is breached, we'll have plutonium and uranium dust all over the place. Under this backdrop, talking about the health benefits of radium water is pretty darned stupid.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

This is an interesting talk on the mutagenic potential of uranium above and beyond the effects from fission.


The gist, very quickly, is that atoms of heavy atomic number are better able to capture the energy of gamma radiation than lighter atoms and that they then re-radiate that energy. The second property is that Uranium is known to have an affinity for DNA. The upshot is that when Uranium is associated with DNA more gamma photons are captured and the energy transferred to your DNA so the damage is worse. How much worse? Several orders of magnitude, apparently.

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