Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Dietary defense against a dirty bomb

A Canadian federal study recently investigated the impact of dirty bombs. The scenarios included cesium and americium.

This old Wired piece, however, mentioned that cesium behaves chemically similar to potassium. It follows that increasing one's intake of potassium after exposure could compete for chemical absorption. A quick check of the periodic table suggests that iron is likely the most tolerated competitor for americium.

Even if one doesn't dose up, apparently the personal risk from initial exposure is small. This may explain the lack of such recommendations.

The risk is actually pretty minimal, replied Steve Koonin, a physics professor at the California Institute of Technology.
"Long exposure to low-level gamma radiation, if you do the numbers, produces a miniscule increase in cancer rates -- one extra cancer per 100,000 people," he said.

On a side note, the FAS projected that a contaminated zone would increase the risk to residents by one cancer per 10,000 people. Perhaps a reason for the paranoid not to invest in real estate downwind of potential targets.

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