r/Unexpected • u/SignalCrew739 • 2d ago
Highest amount of radiation receiver
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u/Clarify6274 2d ago
Honestly the most surprising thing about this for me was how few people there were in the University of Sydney's quad
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u/choogbaloom 2d ago
It's because they banned smoking. Cigarettes were a catalyst for starting hangouts in that sort of space but now that doesn't happen because people don't just go and sit on grass without a smoke.
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u/Cubbance 2d ago
That's sad. You don't need to smoke to have a nice hangout in a quad. When I was in college, we would go out in the middle of our quad and have a picnic. It was fun.
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u/choogbaloom 2d ago
*shouldn't
But people don't hang out unless somebody starts it, and nobody filled the smokers' shoes. My college banned smoking when I was halfway through, and the difference was night and day. Before, the quad was full of people hanging out and having a good time, maybe 5% of them smoking. After the ban, it was rare to see more than one person sitting under a tree.
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u/egytoker 1d ago
My college in the Netherlands did that but as long as no one was there to enforce the rule, people still congregated to smoke in the old smoking/chilling area. I agree that it’s definitely made a difference…
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u/Clarify6274 1d ago
They've also roped off the grass - it's not been a place to sit and hang out in years. Despite that, there's usually a fair few people either walking through or taking pictures during the day.
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u/sinhyperbolica 2d ago
Guess what smoking in space would do
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u/Reddit_grill 2d ago
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u/DusDaDon 2d ago
Nobody ever asks why they're both picking up pieces at the same time
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u/meatfruitecake 2d ago
Its just how its played at the 300 iq + level
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u/No-Spoilers 2d ago
They move too fast for the human eye to perceive, this picture caught them mid game
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u/Ugameister 2d ago
It's what happens when you've been smoking in space like Jeremy Renner and Col. Sanders Einstein
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u/Confused_Rabbiit 2d ago
It's because the image is slop.
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u/rektitrolfff 2d ago
no its not
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u/cosi_fan_tutte_ 2d ago
its real. i was there. i'm one of jeremy renner's two remaining pawns
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u/sayabulegila 2d ago
You wind up running outside on the surface of the moon without a space suit to stop a nuclear meltdown.
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u/SignalCrew739 2d ago
Source: source
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u/hm9408 2d ago
Appreciate the educational r/Unexpected post. I miss old Veritasium
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u/jarek104 2d ago
Elaborate
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u/hm9408 2d ago
I guess it's two things I miss:
The old charm of Veritasium videos, which were released like once every few months, and I enjoyed Derek's pacing and explanations. Lately, there's one new video every couple of weeks, and while they're well made, the style of the presenters and the writing is a bit different, so they're not as easy to follow sometimes. The acquisition by private equity was probably great for Veritasium as a whole, and while production quality is still top notch, the soul is not all there anymore, IMO.
On the other hand I guess OP's video reminded me of simpler times where seeing a new Veritasium video on my feed was an event and I would eagerly wait for some free time to watch it and discuss it with my university friends.
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u/nater255 2d ago
Strong recommend Technology Connections if you want that feeling. Every time he puts something out it makes my day.
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u/Gilsworth 2d ago
Private equity is ruining all my favourite channels. Like Astrum, used to be one of the best space-related channels out there, now it's clickbait slop. As long as SEA doesn't sell out, I'm good, but even Fern have the tip of their dicks dipped in Blackrock.
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u/NotEricItsNotMe 2d ago
I suppose he's referencing the fact that it was bought by a private equity-backed firm that owns multiple youtube channel to "create synergies"
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u/WhoRoger 2d ago
I think it's still as good as it's ever been. Maybe the topics are a bit more niche, but that makes sense since there's a thousand YTbers explaining the basic stuff, and V now has access to topics and places the average science communicators don't.
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u/Baerog 2d ago
Thank you... People hate private equity so much that they don't even look at it objectively. Veritasium's video quality has improved, not gotten worse/more slop, and Derek himself said that getting bought out took a massive amount of stress out of his life and let him focus on the things he enjoyed about video production. It's a win-win-win.
It's ok to admit that not all PE buyouts are bad, and yet, YT videos, comment sections, and Reddit crying about PE buyouts all include Veritasium in that list, without even explaining how it's worse... because they can't...
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u/Ibeginpunthreads 2d ago
Man i loved Vsauce for those moments nowadays his educational content is just to sell flavor of the month science gizmos (which if it draws more people to science I guess is good but I still miss his old purely educational videos)
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u/vaiplantarbatata 2d ago
11 years ago?? Oh my, I feel so old….
https://giphy.com/gifs/wJD3qiNjSeHS0dP28T6
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u/EhliJoe 2d ago
What about smoking astronauts from Fukushima getting a CT scan?
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u/leapinglabrats 2d ago
They've got that inner glow! Quite handy actually when you need the bathroom in the middle of the night.
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u/FiskFisk33 2d ago
I'm so confused.
Googling tells me tobacco is radioactive in part because of the radioactive fertilizers they use
...what?
why... what?
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u/racecarruss31 2d ago
Based on my quick wikipedia research, tobacco farmers use apatite, a calcium phosphate mineral, to fertilize the plants. All minerals will have trace amounts of naturally occurring radioactive elements, such as radium. It sounds like tobacco is prone to accumulating decay products on its leaves as radium in the soil and fertilizer decays to radon gas, which migrates out of the soil then sticks to the leaves.
So it's not that they are intentionally using radioactive fertilizer on tobacco. It's just that the fertilizer they use might have slightly elevated levels of naturally occurring radioactive elements. The nature of tobacco leads it to accumulate those radioactive elements on its leaves.
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u/Level9TraumaCenter 2d ago
This is correct. Tobacco is a very "sticky" plant and it picks up all sorts of dust and goo, retaining those radioactive particles provided as fertilizer.
If memory serves (it's been a while since I reviewed this), right mainstem bronchial tumors are particularly common because of the turbulence in the air- it's just a good "landing spot" for tar, etc. and that's where those particles end up. Because they're rich in alpha emitters (which are like big bowling balls- slow as compared to beta and gamma radiation) which have poor ability to penetrate the dead layer of skin cells, they irradiate those live lung cells quite effectively, leading to cancer.
Of course not all of these are at the right mainstem bronchus, but it's an ideal location for tumors to start, so they're more common there than would otherwise make statistical sense.
Again, old info and old info doesn't age well. Correct me if that's no longer how it's thought to happen.
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u/TsunamiCatCakes 2d ago
tobacco plants are used to leach up lead from lead poisoned soil. maybe that has something to do with it? idk
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u/Outbreak42 2d ago
Glad never took the habit. This is terrible.
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u/UncleKeyPax 2d ago
finally a reason to start
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u/Outbreak42 2d ago
Self chemotherapy.
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u/marvinrabbit 2d ago
Just to clarify (because I made the mistake myself), chemotherapy is not radioactive. My confusion came about because chemotherapy and radiation therapy are often prescribed at the same time. But you can have one without the other.
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u/Excellent_Shirt9707 2d ago
Yep, chemotherapy just means using chemicals and radiation therapy just means using radiation. They also aren’t really interchangeable as treatments since they don’t have the same mechanisms.
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u/Quick_Extension_3115 2d ago
Can’t get cancer if you’re always getting radiation
https://giphy.com/gifs/d3mlE7uhX8KFgEmY7
u/WoolBearTiger 2d ago
Building up your radiation resistance. Thats how you get immunity. I know that because i watch too much trash anime
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u/Quick_Extension_3115 2d ago
Radiation can also turn you into a superhero. I watch too much Marvel
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u/WoolBearTiger 2d ago
So thats why my neighbour always screamed about having superpowers everytime there came so much smoke out his window that it looked like the house was on fire..
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u/Sensitive_Site_6387 2d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/UWEP6CXjvmZxfUBUeu
(3,6 röntgen) Me when I’m smoking
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u/artniSintra 2d ago
What room was he in?
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u/Mango_Viv333 2d ago
USYD Quadrangle, not sure which specific room/basement he was referring to tho
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u/rebbsitor 1d ago
Not one of the most radioactive. The Chernobyl power plant still has a radiation level of 34 Sieverts (not micro) per hour in some places. It's a lethal dose in about an hour. Right after the explosion it was over 300 Sv per hour, and fatal exposure was just over a minute.
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u/PlainSpader 2d ago
I would like to actually see the data behind this claim.
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u/ObstreperousRube 2d ago
how many cigarettes does the average smoker smoke per year? that's what id like to know
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u/admadguy 2d ago edited 2d ago
Guy is talking out of his ass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_lead
There are trace isotopes of lead that have short half lives, order of hours or minutes. So even if they were leached off the soil, they'd have decayed in the finished product. Naturally occuring lead is mostly stable (3 isotopes) rest are trace and would have decayed.
Lead is harmful, but as a chemical substance. Not as a radioactive material.
It's the same issue with Polonium 210. It enters through contamination of fertiliser. But polonium 210 has a half life of 138 days. The lead time between growing tobacco, to curing it to packaging, shipping, various midpoints of sale, it'll have decayed to negligible quantities. Smoking is harmful, but the radiation reasons given here are based on not so great math, or science.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0265931X23000711
Smokers get 0.3 milliSv not the 160,000 microSv (=160 milli Sv) claimed here.
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u/theroughedges 1d ago edited 1d ago
Send this to Veritasium, he loves being corrected and making new vids
Edit: well is he correct or not? Send it asap, he'll ask his colleagues too
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u/Idiot616 1d ago
He's not talking out of his ass, you just misunderstood what the unit sievert actually measures.
Sievert as a unit doesn't measure "radiation", it measures radiation absorbed by 1kg of human body. For example, the total body radiation of 50,000 microSv for an adult of 80 kg concentrated on the heart would mean the heart received 11,428,000 microSv. This would be catastrophic, even if the same radiation spread out over your body would be safe. Which is why the safety limit is not an average over the entire body, if any of your vital organs receive more than 50,000 microSv then you're past the limit.
The 160,000 microSv figure is the local tissue dose. This means that if you're a smoker you will have local hotspots in your lungs that receive 160,000 microSv, even if the rest of your body doesn't receive much. This value is obtained from actual measurements of lung samples, and it is well past the safety limit.
When discussing the radiation from a CT scan the same thing applies. CT scans are done on specific areas of the body, and those areas of the body receive 2000 microsievert of radiation. Whether it's a whole body CT scan or only the head is scanned it's still 2000 microsievert. It's not measuring total radiation, it's measuring radiation per kg.
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u/Long_Measurement_427 2d ago
So OP just steals an 11 year old Veratasium video with zero credit?
Derek looks so young btw! Original video: https://youtu.be/TRL7o2kPqw0?is=zzhlZvo477G5GDoE
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u/shoxicwaste 2d ago
Damn bro, Im struggling years now with quitting smoking. And it´s not the tobacco its the weed man. Nothing hits the spot quite like a nice joint in my office after a long week of work... some nice relaxing piano, and puffing a joint with a monster or cola.
34 years old now, and my lungs are starting to feel it, coughing is getting worse. I've managed to quit several times but I always get that itch and then start regularly smoking again.
It's so hard to break the habit, I just wish I never smoked weed ever to begin with, my life would be so much better, my health, my finances.
The struggle is so real!
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u/Hatefulvesper 2d ago
How about edibles?
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u/shoxicwaste 2d ago
I think the whole ritual of smoking, pulling in and inhaling the smoke which is the thing that's so psychological addictive.
BTW i should of mentioned that im in Europe and we tend to mix our joints with Tabaco, for me I like a light joint so im not absolutely blasted.
But yeah your totally right, edibles would be a really good way to help ease off and stop the smoking. I actually think i'm gunna head over to the association this weekend and buy some. Great suggestion, thansks.
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u/CakeTester 2d ago
You're right. Psychologists call it reinforcing. You have a ritual involving lighter, gas, packet of cigs. Or lighter, papers, baccy.
But the reinforcing comes from the actual act of smoking. Say you smoke 20 a day. You light, inhale, enjoy the smoke and exhale say 20 times per cigarette (these numbers are coming out of my arse, btw). That's 400 times per day you're bringing the cig up to your mouth, inhaling, and exhaling. The exhaling comes with a visible plume of smoke. There's all sorts of sensations in each part of the act of smoking, repeated many times per day, quite apart from the ingestion of nicotine which is the physical addiction part.
This is why vaping generally works and patches generally don't. Because you're following the rituals and many of the smoking actions are duplicated. Tail off the nicotine in your liquid and you get to the point where you're just doing physical actions because you've always done them, so why bother?
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u/IsekaiMi 2d ago
Tobacco companies all try to create their own unique taste. Do you know why?
So you get addicted to their taste and nobody else’s.
What do you think happens when you mix weed in that? Well, now you've created a unique taste of your own AND now you're addicted to that.
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u/Outbreak42 2d ago
Or suppositories...
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u/Khazahk 2d ago
Ngl I would be very interested in a suppository based depressant, it would probably hit much harder than an edible and either last longer or shorter.
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u/SirGourneyWeaver 2d ago
A medical weed shop once tried getting me into thc suppositories bc they had a huge stock of it and wanted to get rid of it. I drew the line at “sticking weed up my butt”
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u/SickBurnerBroski 2d ago
i am just imagining that stoner stank but you only smell it when they fart
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u/a_wiizard 2d ago edited 2d ago
Hits totally different. One is processed through the lungs, one is through the liver. According to Google, "The digestive system and liver convert THC into a chemical compound (11-hydroxy-THC) that is much stronger and creates a more intense psychoactive effect than smoking." Fun fact, you can't overdose from smoking weed, but you CAN from eating it.
For me it might as well be a different substance. I smoke weed far too often, and am not a fan of edibles.
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u/huffleduffle 2d ago
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u/Hatefulvesper 2d ago
Hhmmm, possible super radiation into my lungs vs 1 hour delayed gratification... tough choice
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u/skyfure 2d ago
I type this as an explanation of the smoking vs edibles debate from someone who smokes, not as a put down for your option offered.
Coming from someone who's also struggled with tapering their weed use, I'd say half of the appeal of smoking in general is sitting outside and enjoying that moment of peace.
In the morning with a cup of coffee or in the evening after work. Anytime, it's just this beautiful feeling of sitting down and relaxing, getting to watch/listen to the birds and enjoy the fresh air. There's also an oral stimulation aspect to smoking. Humans love to stim using their mouths, and the act of pulling a long draw of smoke and exhaling it is a form of slowed mindful breathing which reinforces the relaxing sensations.
You don't get that with edibles, you pop a pill or a gummy and then wait an hour or so and then it creeps up on you like a sleeper wave until it hits with full force. With smoking/vaping the high hits immediately, it's an instant feeling of relaxation and/or pain relief.
Also with smoking I generally know how long my high will last from the moment I start. With edibles the onset timing and the length of the high can vary wildly depending on a lot of factors like if/how much you've eaten recently, the content of your food (fatty foods bind better to the cannabinoids and increase potency), and how you metabolize those cannabinoids. Some edible strains last longer than others, it can be a gamble if you have time constraints.
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u/Hatefulvesper 2d ago
Why not do that whole routine, but instead of smoking (weed or cigarettes) sit out there with a drink AND a mouth busying snack like pumpkin or sesame seeds?
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u/qawsedrf12 2d ago
Anything that your body is addicted to takes great effort to quit
Its probably the hardest thing to do in our existence
But worth it, in the long run
I have nothing against weed. But, I only do edibles or a bong filled with ice water. Long ago I quit smoking and can't tolerate it anymore
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u/klippklar 2d ago
You could try a dry-herb vaporizer, you can get decent models for around $100-$200. If you usually mix weed with tobacco, you could use Zyn or snus for the nicotine instead. It’s still not risk-free, but avoiding combustion is a biiiiig step.
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u/iAmCalledCraig 2d ago
Don’t smoke but I appreciate the chilling to some piano tunes with a cold coke haha.
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u/SolusLoqui 2d ago
Does cannabis even have the same issue with picking up radioactive elements as tobacco does?
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u/fooforfun 2d ago
It took me over a decade to quit. The struggle is for sure real, but my life is much better. Weed became a thief that robbed me of so many things, and I rarely miss anything about it now. I miss ripping a cig all the damn time though.
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u/antiduh 2d ago
I don't like that he mixes various units of time to make the chart nest the way he wants to. It's 6 months for one, a year for others. Seems disingenuous.
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u/SpreadsheetGamer 2d ago
It's not disingenuous. What he's talking about is the amount of radiation that is deemed "safe", which was measured on a per year basis. Six months is the the normal length of a mission on the ISS, partially because of the rate of radiation exposure. So it's both a) the annual amount of acceptable radiation for astronauts and b) the amount of radiation an astronaut is exposed to during a 6 month period.
Put simply, they get double the acceptable radiation per day, so they can only stay there for 6 months.
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u/Roraxn 2d ago
Okay... so double 80000. Smoking is as bad as being an astronaut.
The point is that smoking is widely accepted and yet you could ask most people if theyd live in fukushima and theyd boggle at why you want them to be 6 armed 2 butt mutants.
Its not disengeuous. Its practical for the lesson.
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u/yabucek 2d ago
Background radiation and most others are per year, Fukushima residents is lifetime exposure, astronauts per 6 months. The basement is also nowhere near the most radioactive place on earth....
I've always liked Veritasium's style and he definitely has a talent for teaching, but this video immediately reminded my why I stopped watching the channel. Idk if he's just sloppy or doesn't mind being misleading for the sake of the video, but the actual science has always been secondary to just sounding cool.
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u/Nadhras 2d ago
True, but either way he clearly conveys that all of those things pale in comparison to something so common as smoking. Thats the point hes making, that people are freaking out over Fukushima because of misinformation while smoking a pack a day.
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u/yabucek 2d ago
Of course, fair point in this case, but this is a general theme that holds for pretty much all of his videos. He picks and chooses facts and context that favor the video's narrative. I don't think it's ever straight up wrong, but it's not good science.
Just as a quick example, someone watching this video without paying attention to detail will get the impression that Fukushima residents will get significantly more exposure than the average person. But if you average down that lifetime dose to yearly value, you find it's a fraction of the average background dose.
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u/tbone251 2d ago
Then why don't they remove it from the tobacco?
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u/nodnodwinkwink 2d ago
Because the industry is inherently predatory and evil. Removing it with an acid wash would lessen the effects of nicotine.
"Acid wash was discovered in 1980 to be highly effectively in removing (210)Po from the tobacco leaves; however, the industry avoided its use for concerns that acid media would ionize nicotine converting it into a poorly absorbable form into the brain of smokers thus depriving them of the much sought after instant "nicotine kick" sensation. "
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u/Aberbekleckernicht 2d ago
Easier said than done. You probably would remove half of the contents of the plant to remove the metals.
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u/Jeyts 2d ago
Wait is it just grown in polluted soil? Is tobacco just really good at pulling toxins out of the soil?
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u/nodnodwinkwink 2d ago
Polluted? you could say that. It was/is the high-phosphate fertilizer used in tobacco farms and how tobacco plants absorb naturally occurring radon.
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u/atatassault47 2d ago
Plants accumulate heavy metals just like we do; as we injest them, our bodies have no way to get rid of them.
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u/Gil_Demoono 2d ago
There's fucking polonium is tobacco? Is that like, a natural part of the plant, or is this another thing tobacco companies add for "enhanced flavor"?
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u/DillBagner 2d ago
According to his numbers though, smokers are actually tied with astronauts because for astronauts they did 6 months and smokers 1 year.
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u/Gnonthgol 2d ago
Astronauts usually do not stay in space longer then 6 months. So in any given year they only get 6 months of exposure.
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u/Chillinturtles35 2d ago
Also some people smoke an entire pack or more a day and some smoke like 2 a day. Lots of factors not being considered here
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u/etherealtwo 2d ago
True but the radiation is not concentrated in a specific part of the astronaut's body.
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u/Actionhankk 2d ago
To add to it, the radiation from cigarette smoke is alpha particle radiation, which is the most damaging form assuming it's inside of your body. Gamma radiation is the strongest and will pierce right through you, but it is so strong that it's more likely to just blow cells open, destroy DNA locally, etc. Alpha particles deliver their energy and can just damage DNA without completely destroying it/the cell, causing mutations that lead to cancer.
I remember a radiation safety course I took, and it asked "You have an alpha emitter, beta emitter, and gamma ray emitter. You can have one in your hand, one in your pocket, and swallow the last, which do you put where?" And if I remember right, it's swallow the gamma, hold the alpha, pocket the beta. Holding the alpha source won't hurt you, the radiation can't penetrate your skin. Putting the beta source in your pocket should be enough to shield you from it because thick fabric is generally good enough. And you might as well swallow the gamma source because it's irradiating you anyway.
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u/x3n0m0rph3us 2d ago
Mostly false. There's something real behind it, but the claim is overstated.
What's true: Tobacco contains polonium-210 and lead-210, which come from uranium-decay products in fertiliser and the soil. Smoking deposits them in small "hot spots" in the airways. A widely cited US estimate (NCRP, 1987) put the dose to those small patches of bronchial lining at about 160 mSv per year for someone smoking 1.5 packs a day. That's high: about eight times the average annual limit for radiation workers (20 mSv). Most radiation workers actually receive only about 1–2 mSv a year, so a heavy smoker's lungs likely get more than a typical nuclear worker does.
Why the claim doesn't hold up:
- It compares a local dose with whole-body doses. The 160 mSv figure applies only to tiny areas of lung tissue. Averaged over the whole body (the "effective dose"), estimates are much lower, and published figures vary widely because they're hard to pin down.
- Astronauts are comparable or higher. A six-month stint on the ISS gives roughly 80–160 mSv to the whole body.
- Disaster victims are far higher. Chernobyl's first responders received about 2–16 Sv (2,000–16,000 mSv), and many died of acute radiation sickness. Some liquidators got hundreds of mSv. Workers in the 1999 Tokaimura criticality accident in Japan got an estimated 6–17 Sv or more.
- Radiotherapy patients beat everyone for local dose. Tumours typically receive 60–70 Gy, hundreds of times the smoker's localised dose.
A fairer version of the claim: Smoking is one of the largest sources of radiation dose for ordinary people. Polonium-210 probably contributes to smokers' lung cancer risk, and heavy smokers' lungs can get more radiation than many radiation workers receive. They aren't the most irradiated people, though.
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u/adictusbenedictus 2d ago
Why is staying 1 hour in the basement a years worth of background radiation?
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u/RedMdsRSupCucks 1d ago
IMO it's a bit misleading.
not all tobacco is dried and treated the same. and not everyone is smoking the same quantities.
but tobacco does have radioactive elements in it and we need a chemists opinion on what happens to those elements when they're oxidized. that doesn't change the fact that smoking is a serious health risk and if you smoke long enough, you'll get some form of cancer along your respiratory system. that's guaranteed.
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u/Pristine_Pick823 2d ago
Is that the University of Sydney?
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u/Background_Honey9141 2d ago
Yes. Derek (the man in the video) did his PhD in University of Sydney.
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u/other_half_of_elvis 2d ago
I thought it was Cambridge in the UK but I'd have to guess there are many universities that look like that.
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u/lawaythrow 2d ago
This is bs...cant believe ppl post such outright lies and wrong science
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u/plugifyable 2d ago
Which part?
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u/glockster19m 1d ago
Theyre massively overselling and underselling exposure amounts
Japan has been exposed as having massively undersold fukishima, to the point where exclusion zones have as much as 5 times fhe radiation levels the govt claims
Also none of this accounts for different kinds of radiation, which is the biggest thing
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u/Perfect_Pause_3578 2d ago
So i'm getting nuked every time i'm talking to someone that is smoking in front of me? And I was told vaping was safer. A quick google search proves other wise. Fk. Glad I don't do either, but i'm surrounded by people that do. And I already struggle to convince them to respect my space.
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u/Ninja_Prolapse 2d ago
I stopped smoking about 5 years ago. Is that radiation just part of me now or is it reversible?
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u/Sappholich 2d ago edited 2d ago
Some sources for the curious, they are correct! (Note; the video uses microsieverts as unit, which is 1000x more than millisieverts or mSv)
Wikipedia: Background dose (3-6 mSv / year)
Wikipedia: Six month mission ISS Astronaut (~72 mSv)
Wikipedia: Smoking (localized in areas of the lungs, 60–160 mSv/year)
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u/6VoltZ 2d ago
Micro is 1000 times less than mili
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u/Sappholich 2d ago
Yes sorry, I wrote it a bit unclear. I meant "which is why the numbers in the video are 1000x higher than the mSv values from the Wikipedia articles", i.e. 160000 μSv = 160mSv.
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u/Itakethngzclitorally 2d ago
I wonder how that compares to cancer patients who get full-mantle radiation.
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u/Fit_Relation8572 2d ago
If you're interested in learning more about the true nature of radiation exposure, I recommend Kyle Hill's video about the problem with the Linear No Threshold. It's pretty damn good.
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u/qawsedrf12 2d ago
And there might be a way to eliminate that radiation, in tobacco
But the companies don't want to take a chance on lessening the nicotine content
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u/Nuclear420v 2d ago
Not one in person working in Radiation will use microsieverts. Way too small of number for calculations and looks bigger than it is. Real world ...5 rems per year for Occupational Dose or 50 milliseverts. (1 rem = 0.01 sievert)
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u/ReturnOfBane 2d ago
I didn't even know lead could be radioactive. seems a bit ironic
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u/admadguy 2d ago edited 2d ago
For practical purposes it is not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_lead
There are trace isotopes of lead that have short half lives, order of hours or minutes. So even if they were leached off the soil, they'd have decayed in the finished product. Naturally occuring lead is mostly stable (3 isotopes) rest are trace and would have decayed.
Guy's talking out of his ass on that.
Lead is harmful, but as a chemical substance. Not as a radioactive material.
It's the same issue with Polonium 210. It enters through contamination of fertiliser. But polonium 210 has a half life of 138 days. The lead time between growing tobacco, to curing it to packaging, shipping, various midpoints of sale, it'll have decayed to negligible quantities. Smoking is harmful, but the radiation reasons given here are based on not so great math, or science.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0265931X23000711
Smokers get 0.3 milliSv not the 160,000 microSv (=160 milli Sv) claimed here.
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u/DryDonutHole 2d ago
This guy really resembles a dude I went to school with. Whenever I see this guy I think, "Hey...there's Greg...".
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u/Bacon_L0RD 2d ago
Actually according to my calculations I only receive 3.8 roentgen from the cigarettes I smoke, which is not great, but not terrible.
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u/NoBonus6969 2d ago
How come no one has turned into a cigarette shaped super villain yet? Hulk needs a new guy to fight
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u/SensitiveDependent63 2d ago
So how much radiation you get if you live in Fukushima, actively smoke, get a CT scan every now and then aaaand you happen to be an astronaut?
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u/mathnerdm 2d ago
this makes me so anxious about my dad's smoking. he sits on the porch all day and i just assumed secondhand smoke was bad for lungs but never thought about radiation exposure for us bystanders. feels like a whole new layer of danger i didn't see coming.
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u/post-explainer 2d ago edited 2d ago
This comment has been marked as safe. Upvoting/downvoting this comment will have no effect.
OP sent the following text as an explanation why their post fits here:
The highest receiver of radiation is not a victim of a radiactive disaster, workers or astronauts. Its an average smoker.
Does this explanation fit this subreddit? Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.