Comment on If eating a banana is ~0.1μSv, then what is holding a banana for an hour?
siha@feddit.uk 14 hours ago
People saying that bananas are slightly radioactive was never about highlighting that bananas are particularly radioactive, it’s just a coomon example to show that everything is radioactive.
You probably recieve more radiation by being outside for 1 minute than standing next to a million bananas for a month.
Not that it even matters, most of the radiation will be stopped by the air before ever reaching you, and then most of the minute amount that reached you will be stopped by your skin.
Unless you’re literally standing next to the demon core, you basically have nothing to worry about.
PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca 14 hours ago
That’s true for radiation poisoning.
I’m asking about increased risk of cancer.
SuperNovaStar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 hours ago
“Cancer risk” can be a lot of things. It’s not like cancer is just one disease - it’s a whole family of diseases. The mechanisms by which something increases cancer risk are many and frequently poorly understood.
Fortunately, the mechanism of action of ionizing radiation and the cancer risks associated with it are well understood, and so we know that bananas are not dangerous.*
(* well, they’re not dangerous because they are radioactive. It could turn out that they’re dangerous for some other reason.)
Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Once my mate Paul was crushed by a palette of bananas. The crazy thing is, it put a load of pressure on his bowels and he shit all over the place. There was just shit and bananas everywhere. But Paul never got cancer, so I guess he was pretty lucky.