Radiation from Japan

Disclaimer: I am not a nuclear reactor engineer. I am a medical physicist specializing in

diagnostic imaging. I know about radiation.

Do I need to worry about the radiation?

The amount of radiation that has been released from the damaged reactors in Japan is
unknown, but you can be pretty much guaranteed that if any of it does reach the west coast of
Canada or the US, it will be at very very low concentrations and detectable only by very
sensitive radiation detectors. There is a lot of air and weather between the western US/Canada
and Japan that will serve to dilute and wash out any radioactive materials in the atmosphere.
The time it takes for stuff to blow from there to here also means some of the radioactive
materials will decay away, further reducing the amount of radiation that reaches here. It’s been
over a week since the earthquake and initial explosions at the reactor so any airborne
radioactivity would probably have reached the US by now. There have been reports of
radioactive contamination detected at various airports around the US, but that is due to the
radioactive material coming in on planes and passengers. Radiation monitoring stations
maintained by the EPA have not detected any significant levels of atmospheric radioactive
material from the Japanese reactors1.
If you’ve been following the reports in the media recently, you’ll have heard people talking about
stocking up on radiation or potassium iodide (KI) pills. Some people will tell you it protects
against radiation poisoning (which by the way is a completely inaccurate term), others say it
protects against radiation exposure or blocks the effects of radiation.
What potassium iodide will do is saturate your body with stable (non-radioactive) iodine so that
the thyroid can’t take up any radioactive iodine that might be present in your body. That’s all it
does. It’s also only effective when it’s taken a few days before the exposure occurs. It’s not
going to protect your from the radiation given off while the radioactive iodine wanders the body
waiting to be sucked up by the thyroid. It’s not going to protect you from any other type of
radiation. It just keeps your thyroid from taking up the radioactive iodine because there’s so
much more stable iodine in your body. At this point there is no reason for anybody in the US to
start taking KI because of the reactor situation in Japan.

Reliable information sources

● Health Physics Society - http://hps.org/fukushima/

1
JOINT EPA/DOE STATEMENT: Radiation Monitors Confirm That No Radiation Levels of
Concern Have Reached the United States
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/d0cf6618525a9efb85257359003fb69d/a765bae82e4
58d3485257857007373a5!OpenDocument
● International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) -
http://iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html
● Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Japanese Nuclear Emergency: Radiation
Monitoring - http://www.epa.gov/japan2011/
● US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) - http://www.nrc.gov/
● Understanding radiation units
○ http://xkcd.com/radiation/#
○ http://people.reed.edu/~emcmanis/radiation.html#