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Radiation Dose facts

While investigating facts about Radiation Dose Chart and Radiation Dose Units, I found out little known, but curios details like:

Bananas are slightly radioactive due to certain caesium isotopes. Therefore you should never eat more than 600 bananas per second to minimze the risk of a harmful radiation dose.

how radiation dose is measured?

You receive a higher dose of radiation living next to a coal plant than you do a nuclear plant.

What radiation dose is dangerous?

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what radiation dose is lethal. Here are 50 of the best facts about Radiation Dose Comparison Chart and Radiation Dose Limits I managed to collect.

what radiation dose causes permanent hair loss?

  1. Lake Karachay, a lake in Russia that was used as a radioactive waste dump, and has been described as the most polluted place on the planet. Standing on the shore for an hour would give you a lethal dose of radiation.

  2. Albert Stevens, who in 1945 was misdiagnosed as having terminal cancer and injected with plutonium isotopes as part of a radiation experiment. He survived exposure to the highest known radiation dose in any human and lived for another 20 years.

  3. 2500 BED (banana equivalent dose) is recognized as the maximum permitted radiation leakage for a nuclear power plant. The equivalent radiation from eating 2500 bananas. Quite literally a banana for scale.

  4. Harry Daghlian, a 24 year-old physicist with the Manhattan Project. He accidentally dropped a brick into the centre of a plutonium core and exposed himself to a lethal dose of radiation, dying 25 days after the accident.

  5. Grand Central Station in NYC is radioactive due to the natural radioactive elements found in the granite used in its construction. If Grand Central Station were a nuclear power plant, it would be shut down for exceeding the maximum allowable annual dose of radiation for employees.

  6. Scientists have dosed naked mole rats with carcinogens and radiation, yet they have never been observed to develop cancer. They tolerate acid, live 6x longer than other rodents, they hardly age, they survive long periods of oxygen deprivation and can live in heavy metal polluted areas.

  7. Living near coal-fired power stations exposes people to higher radiation doses than living near nuclear plants

  8. Concorde flew so high passengers received twice the dose of radiation from flying in a conventional aircraft, which was believed to increase cancer risk. The flight deck contained a radiometer so they could descend in case of a solar storm.

  9. The most polluted place on the planet is Lake Karachay, located near the Ural Mountains in Russia. In 1990, standing on the shore for 1 hour would give you a lethal radiation dose of 600 roentgen, more than enough to kill you.

  10. The "Banana Equivalent Dose" uses the banana as a basic unit of radiation when calculating radiation exposure levels, and is the original "banana for scale"

radiation dose facts
What is a fatal dose of radiation?

Radiation Dose data charts

For your convenience take a look at Radiation Dose figures with stats and charts presented as graphic.

radiation dose fact data chart about Radiation Dose & Exposure Chart (Sieverts) inc. Chernobyl co
Radiation Dose & Exposure Chart (Sieverts) inc. Chernobyl comparators

radiation dose fact data chart about I released a high altitude balloon into stratosphere with Ge
I released a high altitude balloon into stratosphere with Geiger–Müller counter and measured this interesting graph- radiation dose equivalent vs altitude. The first peak is caused

Why do smoke detectors use alpha radiation?

You can easily fact check why is gamma radiation not used in smoke detectors by examining the linked well-known sources.

You would get a larger dose of radiation from eating a bag of potato chips every day than you would if you lived next to a nuclear power plant.

The fertilizer used by the Tobacco Industry is radioactive. The plant absorbs it and the smoker inhales it. It gets lodged in the lungs and over time contributes a huge radiation dose to the smoker and could be factor in lung cancer. - source

A "Banana Equivalent Dose" is used to measure radiation. It is the potential radioactive dose due to naturally occurring radioactive isotopes by eating one average sized banana. Bananas are literally used for scale! - source

A firefighter at Chernobyl, Vladimir Pravik, reportedly had his eye colour change from brown to blue from the immense dose of radiation he recieved

Doctors managed to keep Hisashi Ouchi alive for 83 days after he was blasted with 17 sieverts of radiation, the highest recorded dose any human has ever received. Estimated to be the equivalent to the epicenter of the Hiroshima bomb, the radiation annihilated his DNA and immune system. - source

Radiation dose when flying?

After Chernobyl meltdown, Russian military pilots created rain clouds to protect Moscow from radioactive fallout. British scientist allowed into the area, said that the population in Belarus was exposed to radiation doses 20 to 30 times higher than normal as a result of the rainfall

How radiation dose is calculated?

One of the most radioactive things on earth is a smokers lungs. Smoking a pack-and-a-half every day exposes a smoker to a dose of Polonium radiation equivalent to 300 chest X-rays a year.

Pilots and flight crews are federally classified by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) as "radiation workers" and receive higher doses of radiation than all other US radiation-exposed workers.

During the manhattan project Albert Stevens was injected with plutonium without his knowledge or explicit consent. He survived over 20 years, accumulating a total radiation dose of 64 Sv - the highest known in any human being.

The most radioactive place on earth isn't Chernobyl or Fukushima, but a lake in the southern Urals that was once home the the Soviet's nuclear waste storage area. You could receive a lethal dose of radiation in 30 minutes just standing on the shore of the lake.

Due to naturally-occurring potassium isotopes in a banana, using it as a "banana-phone" delivers a higher, albeit tiny dose of ionizing (DNA-damaging) radiation into your head compared an actual cellphone, which only emits non-ionizing radiation.

Interesting facts about radiation dose

According to the EPA, a smoke alarm in your house gives you about the same annual radiation dose as living within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant.

Lake Karachay, in Russia, is so polluted with nuclear waste that just standing on the shore would give you a lethal dose of radiation in an hour.

There's a lake in Russia that can give you a lethal dose in radiation in one hour if you even just stand on the shore

water is incredibly effective in protecting against radiation, with radiation doses "decreasing by half every 7 centimeters of water"

How to calculate radiation dose in grays?

The cosmic-radiation dose rate on airplanes is so high that airline flight crew workers receive more dose on average than any other worker, including those in nuclear power plants.

A substance called Corium exists in the Chernobyl reactor. It is so radioactive that anyone who approached would have received a fatal dose of radiation in under a minute.

Unfortunately Edison abandoned experimentation with X-rays after exposing his assistant, Clarence Dally, to a fatal dose of radiation.

An African midge (P. vanderplanki) is capable of anhydrobiosis (survival after losing 97% of its body water). They can also survive extreme temperatures from 90°C to -270°C, vacuums and high doses of radiation, and have the ability to make structural repairs to their DNA after rehydration.

A starship traveling at 99 percent of the speed of light would get a radiation dose of 61 sieverts per second from collisions with interstellar hydrogen.

Tobacco smoke contains Polonium-210 and Lead-210, radioactive elements with half lives ranging from 1/3 of a year to 22 years. The presence of these elements means that smoking a pack a day (about average) imparts an annual dose of radiation ranging from 20 to 50 times the normal dose

Sleeping next to someone for 8 hours give you a banana and a half worth's dose of radiation

Some workers at the Chernobyl Power Plant received lethal doses of radiation on less than a minute when the reactor exploded.

The Stasi, East Germany's secret police during the Cold War, supposedly used radiation to track enemies of the state. Once given a dose large enough to track, officers could follow suspects, their documents and money with geiger counters.

Eating 80,000,000 bananas would give you a lethal dose of radiation, and consuming 500,000,000 bananas would give you a dose equivalent to 10 minutes next to the Chernoble reactor core after its meltdown.

A software bug caused a radiation therapy machine to give patients 100x the standard dose when keys were accidentally pressed in a specific order, killing 3 people over 2 years

Lake Karachay in Russia is the most polluted place on earth. You can get a lethal dose of radiation by simply standing next to it for an hour in some areas.

Banana for scale" is actually used in ionizing radiation exposure scaling, as eating one banana is known as a "Banana Equivalent Dose (BED)", which represents 0.1 µSv of radiation exposure.

Birds surrounding Chernobyl have smaller brains than normal - Low dose radiation can have significant effects on normal brain development as reflected by brain size and therefore potentially cognitive ability

This is our collection of basic interesting facts about Radiation Dose. The fact lists are intended for research in school, for college students or just to feed your brain with new realities. Possible use cases are in quizzes, differences, riddles, homework facts legend, cover facts, and many more. Whatever your case, learn the truth of the matter why is Radiation Dose so important!

Editor Veselin Nedev Editor