Page 32 - Background Radiation News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Where they had to leave the site for an hour. and the japanese haven't -- although they gave a reading at the site boundary where the public could be, although thank god they're evacuated, but they are -- in one half hour, if you stood there, you would get as much radiation as you'd get in a whole year from what we call background radiation. so it's a very high dose rate. on the site, i assume they're lethal. and that's why they had to evacuate during this very intense period. >> and david, you have indicated you believe that we will pick up levels of radiation here in the u.s. soon. but those...

You have one, i got one too. >> it basically tells you two things. one is, since you're wearing it, how much radiation you've been exposed to. and also it has an alarm, yours does, if you find yourself in an area where there's too much radiation. you can't see this number here, but this number went up .001 now. probably just from normal background radiation. if it got up into the one range, that would be of concern. >> jim walsh, again, these 50 people who are -- the condition they're working on, they've been working around the clock for several days, what happens if they leave? what is the wo...

Released around the plant. and the numbers will go much, much down, elliot. >> quickly, i guess that's a good number, .001 compared to what could be. if that went up every year, is that something you could live with, or it above what a human being could live with on a daily basis? >> reporter: no, it's what you can live with. in fact, you know, just walking around new york, for you, you're going to get a certain amount of background radiation. working in a television studio. you're going get a certain amount of background radiation. if you look at it over a year, it probably would closely appr...

Day and in small doses. in the air, rock, soil, cigarettes, secondhand smoke, fertilizers, tv sets, and yes, of course, x-rays. even when you fly, you're exposed to some small amount of radiation. a flight, for example, from new york to los angeles is about half the amount in the chest x-ray, which is still pretty small. the body has learned to observe process and neutralize background radiation. the amount of radiation you and i absorb every year registers at an average level of about 6.2, that's a safe level. that's what we're talking from background. if you have an x-ray, that's about half ...

It's difficult to clean. normally in a situation like that, you would wear tyvek overshoes just like the white or yellow suits and maybe hoods. to go in there with just yourç regular shoes, i have no idea where they were, but to go someplace -- >> i was saying they were not near the site itself, but it was an example of how this local level radiation had spread. >> and we also don't know what the trigger point was on the survey meter that they were checking the shoes it. it sounded like more of an alarm where it hit a trigger point which would could have triggered five or ten times backgroun...