Comment on If eating a banana is ~0.1μSv, then what is holding a banana for an hour?

owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

• PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I’m aware of BeD, which is the inspiration for the post.

  But I’m not talking about radiation poisoning, because we’d know if spending a day in a banana plantation was fatal.
  I’m wondering about increased risk of cancer form long term banana plantation exposure.

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  • owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    A couple things we can gather from these sources:

    1. Being near a banana is likely a much lower dosage. The BED article notes that eating a lot of bananas doesn’t give linear dosages, as the excess potassium is discarded. And if you’re not absorbing much radiation from it being literally inside you, I can’t imagine you’re getting much from having it further away (even at high quantities).
    2. According to the xkcd chart, we receive a yearly dosage of 390uSv from the potassium naturally in our bodies, and living in a stone, brick, or concrete building for a year results in only 70uSv. I’m not sure what the equivalent exposure would be for injecting those materials, but the picture I’m getting at this point is that external exposure to bananas would likely be less fatal than the sheer mass of what would be required to give a significant dose.

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