Sunlight Explains Japan Radiation Risk

One fact can make every mother into an expert at gauging nuclear radiation risk . Lily white shoulders burn in an hour, and ten hours of direct sun will blister and scar (kill) unprotected skin. Like sunlight’s invisible UVB rays, invisible gamma rays ionize biologic tissue. Enough will kill cells and break DNA chains leading to cancer. Instead of being measured in hours, radiation is measured in sieverts. The key fact that can make anyone an expert in judging radiation impact is knowing that one sievert of radiation damages tissue in three dimensions as much as one hour of sunlight damages the skin. Ten sieverts will kill just as ten hours of sun kills skin cells. The latent cancer risk from radiation and sun damage also tracks. A doubling of cancer risk follows both after receiving five intense sun burns or after receiving five sieverts of radiation exposure. ( For Tissue Damage: 1 Sievert = 1 Hour of Sunlight )

However, you’ll notice that agencies and the press report radiation in milli-sieverts or 1/1,000th of a sievert. The associated tissue radiation damage is equal to the skin damage of 4 seconds of sunlight. For example, the World Health Organization reports that radiation levels rose "around the reactor to as high as 10 milli-sieverts per hour" and then fell to "0.02 milli-sieverts." As a radiation expert you should now be able to translate that exposure at the plant to equal the radiation damage equivalent of 40 seconds of sunlight damage to the skin, dropping back to 0.08 sunlight seconds of damage. Certainly, a very small amount.

Our cells are continually damaged in small ways and have mechanisms to pop the one or two DNA steps back into line if they are knocked out of place. For relatively the miniscule seconds of sunlight or milli-sieverts of radiation we have measured in Japan, we are well prepared by Mother Nature and should not be concerned at all.

Best in Good Health,

Chet Billingsley, CEO
Mentor Capital, Inc. (MNTR)
Post Office Box 1709
Ramona, CA 92065
(760) 788-4700 Voice
(760) 788-2525 Fax