Due to the recent nuclear crisis in Japan, we've seen much more technical jargon than usual on major news stories. A reason for this is that radiation physics is a highly technical field and even quantifying radiation can be very complicated: a shift of a few decimal places can mean the difference between no risk and a major radiological hazard. Even the units are new - how many people have ever used 'becquerel' or 'half-life' in a casual conversation?
In conjunction of the new language hitting newspapers and TV screens, we've seen a great push to put radiation in perspective. This basic education goes a long way to help people make choices on how much they should worry about what is going on in Japan and what they can do to protect themselves. Visual examples are popular such as this one on xkcd.com, as well as thorough explanations discussed here by Harvard Medical School.
In supporting this movement, we recently released a Radiation Basics Sheet that we put together with data from the World Nuclear Association and US Environmental Protection Agency. We included some relative doses such as how much radiation you'll get from watching a year of TV, how much from a chest x-ray, and how much you'll get from flying across the US. We hope that this information can be used to turn dispel fears and boost confidence.
Our sheet was recently featured on the blog of STORMWATER (a journal for surface water quality professionals). The post What do the Numbers Actually Mean? is very informative and talks about radiation contamination in Tokyo's tap water. We're excited that someone is putting this information to good use, and we're grateful to STORMWATER for the coverage.
If you would like more information to help you put radiation risks in perspective, we here at D-tect Systems have experts in the radiation detection field who can provide more information by email (info@dtectsystems.com) or even on the phone (801.495.2310).
D-tect Systems is supplier of advanced radiation and chemical detection equipment sold around the world. www.dtectsystems.com.
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