and even from space. it s in our food, in our water, in our teeth. so radiation isn t dangerous in an everyday sense. and there s enormous variation in different parts of the world. do you have any numbers just to put that into kind of a context? the units are difficult. it s rays and milligrams and all this kind of thing. the numbers are not familiar to people in any way shape or form. if i said to you the mi radioactivity is only 400 more millisieverts that wouldn t mean anything to you. reporting radiation levels are as confusing as they could possibly be. has just about 0.7 rem. you have to get up to 50 to 75 rem. we hear rem, microrem,
it s in our food, in our water, in our teeth. so radiation isn t dangerous in an everyday sense. and there s enormous variation in different parts of the world. do you have any numbers just to put that into kind of a context? the units are difficult. it s rays and milligrams and all this kind of thing. the numbers are not familiar to people in any way shape or form. if i said to you the radioactivity is only 400 more millisieverts that wouldn t mean anything to you. reporting radiation levels are as confusing as they could possibly be. has just about 0.7 rem. you have to get up to 50 to 75 rem. we hear rem, microrem, millirems, a lot about millisieverts.
they ve had beans shipped from japan that have been tainted. how do you characterize this? particularly in the areas around the reactors, these are areas of biggest concern. food has been contaminated because there has been this significant release of radioactivity into the local environment. but as radioactivity spreads further and further out, those levels diminish dramatically. let me give you an example. in the plant itself, the measurement that we use are called millisieverts. as those levels and as those distances increased, those levels decreased as well. the problem is that the plant itself released two important
allowed a maximum exposure of 50, that s 50 millisieverts. things at the facility in japan were registering at 400. the body would absorb that amount in 2 1/2 hours, and that could be deadly. this is not like resting on the sidelines of a football game. once you ve had that amount of radiation and you ve reached the limit, it s a cumulative effect. so just imagine you were in the sun and you realized you had a horrible sunburn so you came into the shade, well, you would be very foolish to go right back out into the sun. clearly, the people who are working at that plant really don t have a choice. chances of any dangerous levels of radiation coming here to the united states are very slim according to experts. but for those in japan, the lasting danger is not necessarily the radiation in the air. nuclear fallout on the ground. that is the problem.
lindsay adair yoe, who has been a guest on this show. right now there are many questions about the dangers of radiation and how harmful it could be. it s measured in millisieverts. after me, chad will explain how much of it is out there.