HOT PARTICLES in California, No it is NOT like Flying on a Plane

Ever since Arnie Gundersen brought up the detections of  "Hot Particles" in Seattle's atmosphere, the general public has started to realize that there is something not right about comparing the risks of Fukushima radioactive fallout to those of a pre-Fukushima flight on an airplane and the resultant exposure to cosmic rays. It is the difference between inhaling an X-ray machine vs getting an X-ray.

The danger from Fukushima is that a person will inhale and ingest radioactive fallout that will  be irradiating them  from the inside of their body for potentially their entire lifespan. Unfortunately, most scientists don't report the threat in a manner that allows a member of the general public to actually comprehend the risk in terms that they will understand.


The POTRBLOG site addressed the issue  back in April by converting the EPA's detection of Plutonium in California from units of pico-Curies per cubic meter of air into the number of Plutonium atoms the residents of California inhaled that day. The risk was further converted into how many of those Plutonium atoms would actually release an alpha particle into a person's lung, and a calculation was performed relating those hot particles inhalations to how many lung cancers might result. To make these calculations easy to find, I have created a "hot particle" tag on those posts. To read the articles follow this link.

For information regarding the nature of the EPA's  Plutonium detections in California, please follow this link