Re:High prevalence of diabetes among people exposed to organ...
by Houshalter on Sunday April 09, 2017 @06:21PM
(#14074643)
In some cases a large enough difference in quantity is a difference in quality. The doses of radiation that are dangerous to humans, are orders of magnitude larger than what you get from eating a banana. The amount of bananas you'd need to consume to get radiation poisoning is unimaginable.
Re:High prevalence of diabetes among people exposed to organ...
by mirimir on Monday April 10, 2017 @01:57AM
(#14076390)
There are orders of magnitude more K-40 in you, than in a banana ;)
Re:High prevalence of diabetes among people exposed to organ...
by ChuckMcM on Sunday April 09, 2017 @07:05PM
(#14074808)
Which is the basis for the fact (often disbelieved) that you're exposing yourself to radiation when you sleep next to someone. And that sometimes leads to the what if question 'How many people would have to spoon to create a critical mass?'
But this is funny:
> And things like heavy metals and radioactive substances. Which our ancestors weren't really exposed to.
Please excuse the Wikipedia quote. The numbers are right, and it's written well enough:
> 40K occurs in natural potassium (and thus in some commercial salt substitutes) in sufficient quantity that large bags of those substitutes can be used as a radioactive source for classroom demonstrations. In healthy animals and people, 40K represents the largest source of radioactivity, greater even than 14C. In a human body of 70 kg mass, about 4,400 nuclei of 40K decay per second.[2]
K-40 is primarily a beta (electron) emitter.