Sunday, April 01, 2012

Gone bananas

Well this is published on 2nd April, but I wonder if it's a late April Fool?

New safety standards for radioactive cesium in food products go into effect.

The new standard is going to be set at 100Bq/kg for most food such as fruit and veg. "The average radioactivity of bananas is 130 Bq/kg, or about 19.2 Bq per 150 gram banana". So no more sourdough banana bread for us.

(More realistically, I expect they simply won't test foods that they don't want to ban. No change there then.)

4 comments:

crf said...

I wonder if Friends of the Earth have calculated an estimate of how many millions have died of cancer from eating bananas?

Tim Worstall said...

Umm, they at least say that the limit is upon cesium.....and the radiation in bananas comes from potassium.

So will they in fact be covered?

Or is the limit going to be on all radioactivity in food?

James Annan said...

Assuming the testing can distinguish...probably bananas will get through. Not clear why they should, though, if 100Bq is s dangerous!

Hank Roberts said...

> distinguish ... why
Dunno. Radioactive cesium's decay path goes through Barium-137 which emits a gamma, perhaps that's what they're detecting?
http://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/how3.html

Radioactive potassium goes through one of three paths, I recall

Those with high blood pressure using a potassium chloride salt substitute probably get more than banana-addicts.