Did you know that there is radiation everywhere? We are exposed to lots of radiation every day – from the ground below us to the food we eat. Dive into the world of radiation, where you’ll find out that it’s actually not as dangerous as we think. Maybe it can actually be good for your health.
Radioactivity, like the sun’s rays, is an inevitable part of life here on Earth. There is radioactivity everywhere; Even our own bodies emit radiation that follows us from cradle to grave. Despite this, many people are worried about the invisible radiation that surrounds us, but fortunately, there is advice for this:
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.
– Marie Curie.
But where does the radiation come from, and what exactly is radiation? Is radiation dangerous to us and something we should be concerned about? To answer our question, we must travel around the world. We are going on a city break in China, visiting glistening sandy beaches in Brazil, enjoying the swaying palm trees in India, and on a recreational stay at the hot springs in Iran’s northern pearl. We get to know the invisible rays better, meet controversial scientists and hear about genetic mutations and sad stories of deformed children. We will learn about the dangerous life in the big cities, step inside highly radioactive apartments and visit some survivors of the atomic bombs over Japan. We will also go deep into the heart of the Chernobyl exclusion zone, which is 1986 became the center of the world’s worst nuclear accident. All to better understand the brilliant world in which we live.
Where does the radiation come from?
Many believe radiation is an artificial, technological, and unnatural phenomenon, but nothing could be further from the truth. There is radiation from space above us; the higher we get above sea level, the more radiation we get. Radiation also comes from the ground under our feet due to radioactive elements in the earth’s outer crust.
There is radiation in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. The radiation also comes from building materials in the houses we live in. We are irradiated when we go through security at the airport, go to the dentist, or have an X-ray taken of our set of teeth. Radiation is used to our advantage in the industry, where it, e.g., used to sterilize vital medical equipment or to extend the shelf life of food.
Where most of us think about the radiation we surround ourselves with when it is used in medical treatments and during examinations in the healthcare system, such as X-rays, CT scans, and radiotherapy – where the radiation saves lives. Even our bodies emit radiation because we all contain radioactive elements such as potassium-40 and carbon-14; if we sleep with a partner at night, we get more radiation than if we sleep alone. Radiation is everywhere, and nowhere on earth can we avoid it. Figure 1 below shows an overview of the natural sources of radiation.
Figure 1: Sources of natural radiation and environmental migration. From: EANR, EC-JRC.
Not all radiation is the same.
Some people have a more challenging time sitting still than others, and the same is true in the world of atoms. To calm down, the restless atoms will release their built-up internal energy, which happens spontaneously (without knowing when and without any particular influence from the outside). Radiation is emitted when energy is released from an atom, also called decay. The radiation can take different forms that have other properties and penetrating power. Some of the most important appears in Figure 2:
Figure 2: Overview of the penetration ability of alpha, beta, and gamma radiation. From: Wikipedia.
A piece of paper can stop alpha radiation (α) and has a maximum range of about 3 – 10 centimeters in air. It is therefore controlled by the body’s outermost, usually dead, layer of skin. When meeting the body’s exterior, alpha radiation is harmless. Only if an alpha source should enter the body can it cause damage.
A thin piece of metal foil or a thick layer of clothing can stop beta radiation (β). The radiation has a range of a few meters in the air, and if the energy level is high enough, it can reach right under the skin. If the amount (i.e., the number of beta particles) is large enough, it can cause burn marks on the skin. Like alpha radiation, beta radiation cannot penetrate through walls or windows in a house or car.
Gamma radiation (γ) can penetrate most objects, including the human body. Depending on the energy content, the radiation can be stopped by thinner or thicker layers of concrete or steel. Compared to damage from alpha and beta radiation, ingesting a gamma source is not nearly as harmful since most gamma radiation usually simply passes through the body without affecting it.
These three types of radiation are called ionizing radiation, i.e., radiation that has enough energy to cause changes in our molecules and DNA, as opposed to e.g., non-ionizing radiation from a mobile phone. A general misunderstanding is that ionizing radiation is called radioactive radiation. There is no such thing as radioactive radiation, but as we know from other phrases, even the most obscure and invented words live in wild dressage and are used extensively in the population.
Radiation protection 101
What do we do if there is a source of radiation nearby? Firstly, we can shield ourselves from radiation by, e.g., going inside. We can also increase the distance to it by simply walking away, and finally, we can minimize the time we are near it. The three basic principles that can reduce exposure from a known radiation source appear in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Basic principles of radiation protection. From: World Nuclear Association.
But before we can take precautions, we first need to know if there is a source of radiation nearby, and fortunately, this is very easy to find out.
How is ionizing radiation measured?
Radiation cannot be seen, heard, smelled, or tasted. It is fortunate enough since radiation as a sensory impression could be pretty overwhelming when, as I said, there is radiation everywhere. But we can make the radiation visible by measuring it with a Geiger counter, and it’s effortless. We can measure radiation down to the decay of a single atom (for comparison, the human body consists of approximately 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms).
The measured radiation can then be given in many different units, but we stick to the absolute most used when we talk about the effect of the radiation, namely a Sievert.
Sievert (Sv)
As mentioned, there are several different types of radiation, and there is a difference in how each of them affects our body and how significantly the radiation affects us. There is also a difference in the impact of radiation depending on which tissue in the human body is exposed to radiation. To remedy this, the device Sievert was developed.
A Sievert (Sv) is an expression of the biological effect of radiation in tissue, i.e., what effect the radiation has on us, humans. 1 Sievert is a rather large dose, so we often use the unit millisievert (mSv). 1000 mSv is needed for 1 Sv, in the same way as 1000 milliliters of water are needed for 1 liter. To better understand the unit, we need to have some reference values in place. We find them in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Reference values for dose in mSv. From Informationisbeautiful, UK Health Security Agency & the national board of Health
So we get radiation when we eat, go to the dentist, fly on holiday, and much more. Just living here on Earth gives radiation. We call it background radiation, and we get approx. Three mSv per year in Denmark. It is worth noting that we have to go well above 100 mSv per year before a statistical correlation with developing cancer can be observed. Achieving the dose of 100 mSv, only a few of us come close to getting per year unless we are an astronaut. 100 mSv is approx what an astronaut gets by spending four months on the International Space Station (ISS).
How harmful a specific dose of ionizing radiation is for each of us depends, as I said, not only on the amount of radiation you get on or in but also on the length of time you get it. Getting a dose of 100 mSv in a split second is much more harmful to a person than getting the same amount spread over a year. It can be compared to the fact that it is better to drink a few items once in a while than to drink the entire year’s consumption of alcohol in one evening.
How much, from where?
As previously mentioned, the average background radiation that a resident here in Denmark receives is around three mSv per year. This figure includes contributions from radiation from the Earth’s natural sources, and the three mSv is a rough estimate, as the level of radiation varies enormously, even just across Denmark’s area. There are inhabited areas on Earth where the group is over 50 times higher, but we will return to that. In addition to the three mSv from natural sources, most of us go to the dentist occasionally for an X-ray. We also review examinations and treatments in the healthcare system, and we get an additional one mSv per year on average from these examinations. Figure 5 shows how the approx. Four mSv, which we receive annually, is distributed among the various sources
Figure 5: 74% of the yearly radiation comes from natural sources. From: The Danish Health Authority.
The most significant radiation sources do not attract the most attention. The biggest contributors are hidden in our immediate environment, and radiation from the medical world comes after them. Completely everyday things, such as living in a well-insulated house or flying on holiday. If you are a flight attendant or pilot, this can significantly increase the annual dose. Many have heard disturbing stories about all the radiation we are still receiving from the fallout from nuclear testing from the 1950s to the 1970s and the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear power accidents. But the fact is that the radiation we receive from here is just 0.3% of our annual dose.
The annual share of radiation from Chernobyl is greater if you live inside or around the closed zone, but the claim is vanishingly small for most of us residents here. The vast majority of the radiation we receive comes from natural radiation sources.
How dangerous is radiation?
So we all get radiation – whether we want it or not – but how dangerous is it? We can compare with known risk factors such as smoking and obesity. We reach a lifetime smoker, a severely obese person, and one of the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who was closest when the bombs went off without dying from the blast. The survivors received an average radiation dose of 2250 mSv (2.25 Sv). Who loses or loses the most years of life? It appears from figure 6:
Figure 6: The most dangerous thing is being a smoker and then severely overweight: J.T. Smith, 2007.
Most of us are well aware that being a smoker or severely overweight is not particularly beneficial to health, but that the two risk factors take more years off of life than the survivors – who were close to the detonated atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – have lost, it probably comes as a surprise. We can also compare the increased risk of premature death suffered by the clean-up workers after Chernobyl with the increased mortality of people exposed to second-hand smoke or the increased mortality of something as trivial as living in a big city like London compared to living in a smaller city. Figure 7 shows the increased risk of early death in the described scenarios.
Figure 7: If you fear increasing your risk of dying earlier than otherwise, life in a big city cannot be recommended. Photo: Unsplash.
The probability of an earlier death from something as familiar as living in a big city is almost three times as great as if we compare it with the clean-up workers who received the highest radiation doses in the Chernobyl accident. Even living with a smoker is more dangerous. A rule of thumb is that if we expose 100 people to 100 mSv radiation, then one person out of the 100 people will get radiation-induced cancer later in life, but at the same time, 42 people from the same group will get cancer from other causes, as shown of Figure 8.
Figure 8: If we give 100 people 100 mSv of radiation, one (colored in red) will develop radiation-induced cancer, and 42 will get cancer from other causes. From: Health risks from exposure to low ionizing radiation, BEIR VII Phase 2.
Is there reason to be concerned about the radiation in small doses we encounter daily? Judge for yourself. Immediately, it is far more exciting and compelling for world health to find out why the other 42 people get cancer.
It is also worth noting that a level of 100 mSv per year is already quite a large dose, which very few of us even come close to. Not even the evacuees in connection with the accidents in Chernobyl and Fukushima were close to receiving such large doses of radiation. Residents of Pripyat, who were evacuated in connection with the Chernobyl accident, received an average amount of 33 mSv. The Fukushima accident evacuees received a dose of 0.05 mSv and six mSv in the first year after the accident.
Special treatment for radiation
Low doses of radiation do not appear statistically to be something we need to worry about, but despite this, all radiation levels today are subject to stringent regulation. A regulation that goes directly against the classic teaching in toxicology that it is the dose that constitutes the poison. It follows from the sentence that everything is poisonous to humans if only the amount is high enough.
We can use pretty ordinary tap water as an example: It is not harmful to us to drink a few glasses of water per day and over a week to drink 5 liters of water, but if we consume more than 5 liters of water within a few hours, we can die of the. The way we give special treatment to radiation as being extra dangerous to us humans does far more harm than good. Today, the limit values for radiation are set so low that they have destroyed and claimed thousands of human lives. Far more human lives than radiation from even the worst accidents could ever claim.
For the above and, of course, controversial claims to make sense, we will have to dig into one of the most controversial scientific models to date, a model which to this day does far more harm than good.
The LNT model – all radiation is harmful
When authorities today set the limit values for radiation exposure for people in certain professions where the risk of radiation is more remarkable, for example, personnel in the healthcare system during X-ray or radiation treatment or when protection procedures must be implemented after radioactive accidents, the so-called “linear no-threshold model,” or simply the LNT model.
According to the LNT model, there is a linear relationship between the radiation dose you receive and the damage you can expect. This means that if one group of people receives twice as much radiation dose as another group, then one would – according to the model – expect to find twice as much radiation damage. A fundamental assumption in the LNT model is that damage occurs regardless of the size of the dose and regardless of whether you receive the entire quantity in a short time or spread over a more extended period. According to the LNT model, no amount is so tiny that it has no effect.
Translated into understandable Danish with a representative example: The LNT model assumes that eating one Panodil every day for 100 days is just as harmful as eating 100 Panodils in one day. Our liver can easily handle 1 Panodil a day, even if it kills a few individual liver cells. The damage is so tiny that the liver can repair itself. 100 Panodils, on the other hand, destroy so many cells at once that the liver cannot fix the damage again. The model, therefore, does not consider the body’s protective biological response and ignores the different reactions that the body has to resp. Low and high radiation doses.
Irradiated banana flies
The foundation for the LNT model was laid by the American geneticist Hermann J. Muller. He demonstrated in 1927 that X-ray radiation at a low dose could cause genetic mutations in the germ cells of banana flies and thus harm the offspring of the banana flies. An attempt for which he was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1946.
Among Muller’s colleagues, however, there was great concern about his study’s design, which had several methodological flaws. There was also the small detail that the “low dose” used was thousands of times greater than the background radiation we humans usually are exposed to. In his Nobel Prize speech, Muller explained that there is no safe radiation dose, despite several studies showing the opposite. He thus also chose to ignore a large study that had just been published and supported that there was a threshold value below which radiation was harmless.
Implementing the LNT model was somewhat controversial and based more on ideology than thorough scientific work, just as there are doubts today about how solid the data material on which the model is based.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki – The LSS Study
A critical study for implementing the LNT model is a study from one of the darkest chapters in human history – namely, the study of the survivors of the atomic bombs used by the United States at the end of World War II against Japan.
The study is called “The Life Span Study” or the LSS study, and since 1950 has followed 120,000 irradiated Japanese survivors, a good 3,600 children who were fetuses at the time, and 77,000 children who were conceived after the bombs went off. Their health has been carefully monitored throughout their lives and compared to a large control group (Japanese who lived in the area but were not present during the bombings) to assess any additional damage that can be linked to the radiation from the bombs.
The collected data was plotted on a graph which showed a linear function of the effect of radiation on humans. At the high radiation doses, the correlation was clear, but the lower the amount, the more unclear the indications of the data points became. Despite this, the data from the high doses were extrapolated all the way down to zero, and the line expressing the relationship between radiation and the biological effect was set to intersect the zero point of the graph. From this, it followed that all radiation has a harmful effect: the LNT model was substantiated, and at the same time, the fear of low radiation doses was also legitimized. The model can be seen in Figure 9 below.
Figure 9: In the LNT model, the zero point is cut so that any radiation dose has, according to the model, a harmful effect.
The other extensive population studies
However, the LSS study is one of many studies from which we can extract data. Over time, many of these extensive population studies have been carried out in which a clearly defined group of individuals exposed to a specific influence – in this case, ionizing radiation – were followed up throughout their lives. The group’s health and disease development is then compared with a group that was not exposed to the same influence.
Figure 10 shows data from a number of these studies.
Figure 10: Increased relative risk of developing cancer concerning radiation dose. From: McLean AR et al. l of 2017.
At first glance, it may look a little confusing, but if we zoom in on the area of the graph that is at the very bottom left corner at 0.1 Sievert (i.e., 100 mSv) on the graph, the uncertainty on the data points is so considerable that they overlap 0, and what does that mean? In practice, this means that we cannot conclude that there is a connection between the radiation one receives and the effect that the radiation dose derives. You can even see points that lie below the x-axis, and these may be an expression of a specific protective effect of low radiation doses.
We, therefore, need to exceed 100 mSv before we can see a clear correlation between radiation dose and resulting damage. Precisely the effect of these higher doses of radiation is well documented in the literature. But what happens at the low doses is still being determined, and we may never find out. Finding a precise answer would require us to expose a large population group to a low amount of radiation and compare it with a group that does not receive the same low dose. Getting permission to carry out such a controlled experiment may be a tough nut to crack, and it probably cannot pass a scientific ethics committee, and obtaining consent from all the participants will be impossible. It is also impossible to set up such an experiment where a large population group is isolated from all radiation since radiation – as previously mentioned – is everywhere around us.
But when setting up such an experiment is impossible, we have to think creatively instead. There are – as previously mentioned – areas on the globe where the background radiation is much higher than the average three mSv we get here in Denmark, and if all radiation is linearly harmful, just as the LNT model assumes, then it follows from the model that the people who live in such an area will have higher incidences of cancer. But do they now have it too? Let’s visit some warm climes.
Exotic destinations – Yangjiang, Kerala, Guarapari, and Ramsar
We start our journey with a city break in the million city Yangjiang in southern China. Here, the locals receive an annual dose of radiation of approx. 6.4 mSv, i.e., 3.4 mSv more than the average background radiation in Denmark. Despite this, there are no more cancer cases here than if we compare them to areas with a lower level of radiation.
Now the trip goes to Kerala in the southwestern part of India, and remember the bathing suit because the area is famous for the Malabar coast with glistening beaches and palm trees that sway in the breeze. The beaches are also known for having a high content of the mineral monazite, which contains the radioactive element thorium. The radiation level here varies greatly, but over 100,000 people live in areas where the annual dose is around 10-40 mSv. Even here, however, no more cancer cases are observed, and the residents of Kerala have the same risk of developing a tumor as other areas of India, where the radiation level is 5-10 times lower.
We board the plane again, and the trip goes to Brazil, where it is time for another beach trip. We are visiting Guarapari Beach, where the annual radiation dose is around 70 mSv. The radiation in certain hotspots is even higher, up to 56.21 µSv (microsievert) per hour, equivalent to 493 mSv per year! Despite this, the beach is a popular tourist destination, and locals often visit it because the warm sand is said to relieve pain from rheumatoid arthritis. Increased mortality due to cancer is not observed here either.
For the last time, we pack our suitcases and now fly to Iran’s capital Tehran. From here, we drive 200 km north until we end up at the Caspian Sea in the city of Ramsar, also called Iran’s northern pearl. Ramsar is also a popular tourist area known for its recreational hot springs, but it is also known among radiation experts to be the area in the world with the highest level of background radiation. A small part of the local population receives radiation doses here, up to 260 mSv per year. They are therefore bathed in ionizing radiation every year in an amount up to 13 times the annual limit value for employees in the nuclear industry, and many of them have lived here for generations.
Surely we should be able to observe a higher incidence of cancer?
The answer is again a surprising no.
Figure 11: Yangjiang, Kerala, Guarapari, and Ramsar are popular tourist destinations where you can enjoy more than just the sun’s rays. Photo: Timetravel, Wikipedia and Tripadvisor.
What can we take with us from this radiation journey? Apart from local souvenirs and a bit of color on the body, radiation up to 100 times the average background radiation does not seem to increase cancer incidence. A study of over 320 million Americans shows that those living in areas with a higher level of background radiation live up to 2.5 years longer and have fewer cancers, including lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, and colon cancer, compared to those living in areas with less radiation.
Destination : Chernobyl
Before thoroughly packing our suitcases, we must visit a slightly atypical but hugely popular tourist destination. We took a trip to northern Ukraine and visited the area around the destroyed reactor number 4 at the Chernobyl plant. The site is considered by many to be an uninhabitable dead man’s land, and it will continue to be so for many thousands of years into the future.
Reactor number 4 was one of six reactors at the plant. It melted down and was totally destroyed in the accident in 1986. However, this did not mean that the plant’s remaining reactors were shut down for that reason. Reactors 1, 2, and 3 continued operation, while reactors 5 and 6 were neither completed nor commissioned. The last reactor was, therefore, only taken out of the process in December 2000, 14 years after the accident in reactor 4. Despite the authorities’ warnings, many elderly citizens, the babushkas, moved back to their farms after a few weeks, where they still live. They live in the closed zone and seem longer than their neighbors who moved out and did not return. Today, the closed site is a paradise for wild animals such as wolves, bison, bears, horses, and many other animals that enjoy peace away from humans.
But what is the level of radiation?
Figure 12: The level of radiation around the Chernobyl plant (microsievert per hour, µSv/h). Photo/graphics: BBC, University of Georgia and the University of Portsmouth, Ukrainian Research Institute of Agricultural Radiology, Volodymyr Repik/Associated Press.
In large areas, the radiation level is comparable to inhabited areas in Europe. In Denmark, it is on average 0.34 µSv/h, in southern Sweden 0.57-1.14 µSv/h, and in northern Spain over 1.14 µSv/h. There are also “hotspots” where the level is high. The red forest is one of these areas which, due to the direction of the wind, received a large part of the fallout from the accident.
If we defy the signs with warnings about radiation and go for a walk in the forest anyway, the level of radiation in the red forest is around 35-40 µSv/h. If we instead choose to wear a bathing suit, buy a soft ice cream, and enjoy the sun’s rays down on the Guarapari beach in Brazil, we will be greeted here by the same (or slightly higher) level of radiation as in the red forest. However, it should be mentioned that there may be a higher level of radiation locally in the area, e.g., at a facility used to clean the soil of ejected reactor fuel. Radiation doses up to 1.2 mSv/h (millisievert per hour) can still be measured at this facility. We can thus receive what corresponds to the annual background radiation in a few hours.
The radioactive apartments
We will probably never get approval to carry out experiments to expose people, i.e. large groups of the population voluntarily, to radiation. But what if we came to it by accident? Such an experiment was involuntarily conducted in Taiwan in the early 80s. Here, steel was accidentally contaminated with radioactive cobalt-60, and subsequently used in the construction of over 180 buildings, including 1,700 apartments, schools, and small shops.
Radioactive steel was used to construct over 1,700 apartments, schools, and businesses in Taiwan in the early 80s. Photo: Michael Frizell
Over 10,000 people were unknowingly exposed to approx. 400 mSv radiation over 9-20 years, and only when the authorities became aware of the error were the residents immediately evacuated. Thorough health examinations were subsequently initiated, and the development of the resident’s health and well-being was carefully examined compared to the national average. In the period 1983-2002, the national average cancer mortality in Taiwan was 116 deaths per 100,000 person-years
For the residents of the radioactive apartments, the mortality rate was only 3.5 deaths per 100,000 person-years, or what thus corresponds to 3% of the national average. The number of children born with congenital disabilities was also only 6.5% of the national average. The study’s surprising results can be seen in Figures 13 and 14.
Figures 13 and 14: Comparison between the exposed and non-exposed population. From: W.L. Chen et al. 2007.
Maybe it’s time we start thinking about radiation the same way we think about the sun’s rays. Sun in moderate amounts is beneficial for us, while too much sun gives us burns and increases the risk of skin cancer. In the same way, radiation in low doses may train our body’s defenses against the over 10,000 typically occurring damages in our DNA that we are all exposed to every day from natural influences, including the radiation around us. Repair mechanisms that the LNT model assumes do not exist, but the three scientists, Thomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich, and Aziz Sancar, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2015 for mapping.
Genetic mutations and malformed children
Muller started the trouble in 1927 with his experiment on banana flies and the claim that “there was no safe dose of radiation.” It has since been shown that a low dose of radiation on banana flies has a protective effect when it comes to the number of mutations in their offspring. Muller was very concerned with the idea that genetic mutations should not be passed on to the next generations, and he stated in 1946, after receiving his Nobel Prize that:
It would be fortunate if all those exposed to a nuclear explosion (such as the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) were rendered permanently sterile.
– Muller, 1946
They must have been quite upset about that in Japan because it turned out that no genetic effects or increased incidences of birth defects were observed due to the radiation, and radiation, despite what most people believe, has never shown heritable effects in humans, not in Japan after the bombs, nor with the descendants of the clean-up workers at the Chernobyl accident. The myth about radiation and deformed children is, unfortunately, exceedingly tenable. This is despite even the National Board of Health trying to knock it into the ground. They write:
The genetic effects of ionizing radiation have never been demonstrated in humans. Even if a person is exposed to a high radiation dose, there is thus no known risk of damage to the person’s future children.
–The Danish Health Authority, 2022
This is extremely fortunate because we use radiation in large doses to treat, among other things, children and young people with cancer who would like to have children themselves later in life.
When over-caution costs lives
We have now stuck to the LNT model for over 70 years, and it has gradually had many nails hammered into the coffin lid. Several researchers believe there is a great need for an alternative model and that new data do not support the model.
It is high time that we do away with and have the model’s assumptions for radiation damage at low doses of radiation rewritten. But why exactly? Why not just continue to protect people from low radiation doses?
The answer is simple: the LNT model has cost many more lives than it has saved. The model has done more harm than good and is still a source of human unhappiness today. For example, in Japan in 2011, three reactors at the Fukushima plant were destroyed due to a massive tidal wave that followed on the heels of the world’s fourth-largest recorded earthquake. The radiation released by the accident had no negative health consequences for the population.
No one has died or is at risk of dying due to the radiation, again emphasized in 2020 by the UN expert panel UNSCEAR. The residents received radiation doses in the first year after the accident in the order of 0.5-6 mSv. It is far from here and up to the 100 mSv where, as I said, we can register the adverse health effects of radiation. In contrast to radiation, man-made reactions, on the other hand, had deadly consequences. In connection with the accident, over 160,000 people were evacuated, which cost over 2,000 people their lives.
It was an evacuation that was not necessary at all. A resident of the most contaminated areas of Fukushima Prefecture, if they had stayed where they were, would have an expected loss of life expectancy from the radiation that is less than that of a resident of a large city due to air pollution. Ten years later, over 35,000 people have still not been allowed to return. They are kept away due to a level of radiation that is less harmful to health than the air pollution in Tokyo.
The Japanese government has set a highly conservative limit of 1 mSv as the limit value for how much additional and background radiation the residents may be exposed to yearly. Even in a country where the background radiation is only 1.5 mSv annually. Half of what it is in Denmark. In trying to avoid exposure to minimal radiation doses, we do far more harm than good. Far more damage than the radiation can cause. The LNT model’s predictions at low radiation doses destroy and therefore take lives.
After the Fukushima accident, we experienced 0 deaths from exposure to ionizing radiation from nuclear power. Conversely, over 2,000 died from the later proven unnecessary evacuation. As many as 20,000 lost their lives due to the earthquake and subsequent tsunami.
A world full of dangers
We, humans, live in a world full of dangers. We are surrounded by them every day, they are within our field of vision and reach, but we no longer see them. Unhealthy lifestyle with questionable diet, alcohol, and smoking. Inactivity and life in front of screens, or if we venture outside, the dangers of urban air pollution or crossing something as mundane as a busy road. We cycle without a bicycle helmet because it ruins the hairstyle, or we forget to put on sunscreen properly at the beach.
All in all, far greater threats to our health and well-being than any level of radiation we may encounter in the world we live in will be able to pose, even in an accident like the Fukushima accident, where not one person died or in danger of dying from radiation, even though as many as three reactors melted down. We even have to go all the way into the reactor buildings before we are met with radiation levels that become problematic for us and our health.
The concern about radiation, and our questionable ability to assess risk, do not enable us to see the real dangers around us, such as burning coal, oil, and gas, which kills 8,700,000 people globally every year. A burning that also accelerates the looming climate crisis. When it comes to radiation, we don’t have much to fear. Radiation is part of us. The radiation is everywhere. It has always been here and will be here long after we are gone.
It is time we learn to understand and live with it.