> John LaForge, who writes for Nukewatch, correctly notes that there is no "safe" level of exposure to radioactivity.
We don't know that. Not only there may be a safe level of exposure, there may be a beneficial level[1]. Any rigorous experiment would be obviously unethical so we're just guessing here.
A slightly less wrong (but still wrong) title would be "Sunlight is deadlier than pacific sushi".
First, this article doesn't even mention cell phone radiation. Second, your cell phone isn't deadlier than pacific sushi. Damage to DNA caused by EM radiation is more a function of frequency than intensity. A small amount of X-Ray radiation is far more damaging than sitting in front of an infrared lamp getting toasty warm all day. Sunlight is far likelier to give you cancer than cell-phone emissions. Eating a banana, or Pacific sushi, is extraordinarily unlikely to give you cancer, but it does increase the odds more than using your cell-phone will.
Also it is important to remember that nuclear radiation (ionizing radiation) is what people normally think of as "radioactive". Cell phones emit non-ionizing radiation, which we mostly experience as heat or light -- not what we would call "radioactive".
I've always been told that "sunlight causes skin cancer" but after 20 minutes of looking around the Internet, I can't seem to find an actual scientific study that confirms the statement to be true.
I don't know where you looked but you were looking in the wrong place. An overwhelming majority of the studies ever conducted on the topic have found UV exposure to increase skin cancer risk. In fact, most studies are more interested in the mechanisms now than the risks, since the risks have been known for 50 years.
> There was a significantly increased risk with sunburn at all ages or in adult life (OR = 1.91) and similarly elevated relative risks for sunburn in adolescence (OR = 1.73) and in childhood (OR = 1.95).
Basically, if you have a history of sunburn (at any age) you nearly double the chance of getting malignant melanoma (the most deadly form of skin cancer).
UV radiation found in sunlight can produce Pyrimidine dimers, which can lead to genetic mutations. Essentially, the UV radiation causes two DNA bases (Thymine or Cytosine) to fuse together and make that portion of DNA unreadable. Fortunately, our cells have mechanisms to repair such DNA damage, but if damage is acquired faster than the cell is able to repair itself, then permanent mutation is likely. If a cell acquires too many mutations, the mechanisms that prevent it from continuously replicating may fail, and the cell will replicate uncontrollably and spread throughout the body. This situation is known as cancer, and can occur in many different ways, making it fairly difficult to treat.
Right. This is the exact type of language I found everywhere else. Just because it "can" mutate which "can" become cancerous does not mean there is a direct correlation between UV radiation and skin cancer. I'd like to see some actual studies with controlled variables.
Getting cancer is like winning the lottery, and every time you go out in the sun, use a cleaning product, get an X-Ray, take an intercontinental flight, eat a banana, etc. you get a varying number of tickets. Unlike a lottery, once you finally "win" it's virtually impossible to figure out which ticket was "lucky".
To do a controlled study on humans you'd need those humans to record an impractical amount of information about their day-to-day actions over their entire lives. This isn't going to happen anytime soon. To make matters worse, humans also use sunlight to synthesize Vitamin D, and low levels of Vitamin D are also correlated with cancer. So... Too much UV gives you cancer and too little can give you cancer if you don't get enough Vitamin D in your diet, which might also give you cancer. Okay... So use mice. Do mice respond exactly the same way to everything as humans? No... Probably not...
Medical science is a bit like trying to figure out how to build the ultimate F1 car on a budget that only lets you work with Lada's.
One nice natural experiment is drivers. People who drive in the US get more sun on the left side of their face and their left arm. People who drive in Australia get more sun on the right side of their face and their right arm. If you measure which side people tend to get cancer on it seems to track this.
If humans were truly in danger from eating 'contaminated' fish, then we would have all died when we started to introduce coal smoke into our atmosphere (contains Caesium 137 and most plants emit more radiation per year than a nuclear plant does in its lifetime) and when the Crab Nebula decided to show its pretty colours (gamma and x-ray radiation) in the daytime centuries ago.
The headline was very misleading fud indeed... ironically after reading this I have the strange craving for fresh tuna, or even a guided tuna trip off the pacific coast. I'm convinced its delicious and safer than a banana. Was this some kind of tuna industry media reverse psychology?
Now there's an interesting thought. Environmental-disaster/health-scare hoaxes, to give certain targeted wild ecosystems a chance to heal. If the environmental movement ever gets a covert operations agency, maybe that's what we'll see. (Or are already seeing?)
Maybe a new strategy is in order? They could spread documents that reveal that tuna has been involved in all major internet trolling incidents between 2010 and 2013.
They should go with "studies have shown that chemical X (found in tuna) can cause male genitalia to shrink by up to 17%". People don't care about dying 10 years sooner, but they do care about having bigger penises.
Not sure about that either. When I was in middle school Mountain Dew was said to do exactly that. I think parents and teachers just wanted kids to stay away from sugary drinks. My friends kept drinking it anyways.
> If lowering the cumulative exposure to radiation is the goal, there's probably more to be gained by not walking around with a mobile phone glued to your ear than skipping a meal of tuna.
Thats the only reference they make to phones in the whole article, i really wonder who picks those headlines ?
Besides, the Banana theory is total nonsense. Our body needs the potassium found in bananas to work. The electrical signals that power your heart are only possible because of potassium and calcium. If your potassium is too low/high, your heart can get arrhythmias, you might even die. Nothing to worry about though, as the body manages a constant postassium level in the blood, but still, without foods containing it we couldnt survive.
``Your Days of Eating Pacific Ocean Fish Are Over at the Very Least,'' reads the headline of a post accompanied by photos of people suffering from radiation poisoning, as well as a deformed infant"
Brilliant campaign for the anti-whaling /anti-fishing crowd actually. The truth doesn't matter, as long as people believe it.
"And the plant operators and government seem to be blundering from one miscalculation to the next. If the scale of the leak increases, or large quantities of more persistent radioactive elements such as strontium-90 get into the food chain, there might be cause for greater concern. So far, that doesn't seem to have happened."
The governments also lie ("downplay") http://www.theguardian.com/environment/interactive/2011/jun/... for one reason or another (commerce, not cause panic etc) so their numbers would mean little to me. Better safe than sorry, it's not like I can't do without Japanese fish for xxx days.
We don't know that. Not only there may be a safe level of exposure, there may be a beneficial level[1]. Any rigorous experiment would be obviously unethical so we're just guessing here.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis