Overdose or overdo? Doused and scanned for radiation

Whenever you travel, you're sure to carry away some memorable experiences.

I had to walk through a radiation scanner on my visit to Taipei last week. The experience was both nerve-wracking and ridiculous.  This is the kind of thing that makes people unnecessarily worried  (Just ask the UN).  Passengers arriving from Japan were sequestered off for a special check.  The scanner was brown and resembled a thin, lanky doorframe. There were two or three officials wearing masks sitting at a table to one side of the scanner watching to see whether those who passed triggered a red or green light.

I didn't get a chance to take a picture, but I was able to find a video of the scene in Taipei:

There's also this news report.  Of course, everyone who passed through the brown gate triggered the green light. Who knows what the Kafka-esque red light is supposed to indicate...

I think my largest dose of radiation in all of this came from the airport (a trip through the metal detector and round-trip flight.

There was one other odd detail about my flight into Taipei (departure and arrival): a large swatch of translucent blue tape (sticky side up) was set upon the floor of the jet bridge in the space directly before entering the aircraft.  The edges were taped down and the size was so large that you couldn't leap over it without a running start.  At first glance it was kind of comical, but my paranoid brain told me, "You've never had to do this before.  Is this something related to the radiation scare?"  It was sort of like flypaper for humans.  It pulled at your feet as you treaded over it.

Maybe this is just a China Airlines thing, but why both before boarding the aircraft and again when exiting?  Perhaps the strange, sticky tape trap was designed to collect radioactive dust, rather than have it being left aboard like a peanut wrapper tucked into the seat crevice.  Unfortunately for the airlines, if there really is radioactive dust on your shoes, there's probably dust in/on your clothes.  I wonder if those HEPA filters used on aircraft would collect that sort of airborne dust?  How often are those changed, anyway?

The scanning reminded me (ironically) of a similar experience...
In May 2009, I visited Japan during the swine flu scare.   I remember when I landed at Kansai International, a group of Japanese medical personnel boarded my plane clad in goggles, masks, yellow, hooded jumpsuits to screen passengers for elevated body temperatures.   The whole thing was surreal--like some cross between Predator and The Hot Zone.  Two rows behind me, someone was found with an elevated temperature, so half of the plane was quarantined (probably for ten days).

The ordeal didn't end at the airport, either.  Throughout my trip, I was pestered with calls from the Board of Health, as my flight had originated in Huntsville, AL, where there had been several confirmed cases of swine flu in the week leading up to my trip.

Traveling is always an adventure.

Shake, rattle, and roll (again) Another big earthquake/aftershock

Last night at around 11 PM there was a fairly large (and long!) earthquake/aftershock. In Narashino, what made it unique from the hundreds of others that we've experienced since March 11 was its length. In Miyagi prefecture at the epicenter, it was registered at a 7.2 magnitude. According to the news, three died from last night's quake (of course not in Narashino). If you had asked me on March 11, I don't think I would've believed it possible but I've become all too accustomed to these quakes. I was half asleep when last night's hit, and I didn't even get out of bed.

Aside from the geological report, I thought I would mention today's strange weather. The crazy kaze here in Narashino today was an incredibly strong and relentless Mary Poppins gale; it turned the land surrounding 第一中中学校 into a dustbowl (School 1 is a wonderful junior high school here in Narashino that now lies in the middle of a major construction site).

I'll let the Fishmans give you the extended forecast:

Saturday in Narashino

Things are calming down in Narashino.  I noticed yesterday that a few buildings were recently torn down.  I can't say for certain that all of these were due to the mega-quake (and aftershocks?), but at least one was.  I'll post pictures (before and after) in a later post.

The crisis in Fuskushima is far from solved, but so far the impact is minimal here in Narashino.  Chiba Prefecture continues to post atmospheric radiation readings (gamma) on their site.  Today I translated this document, to make it easier to understand for English readers who cannot read Japanese. I'm just looking for ways to help people involved in all of this.



My translation is publicly viewable via this link.  Clearly these numbers are very encouraging.  The gamma radiation so far has not been dangerous or significantly different from what it was a year ago.  Based on this data, I would say the change in radiation levels here in Chiba so far has been negligible.

My mother used to work as a chemical engineer for the US Environmental Protection Agency. She's been helpful with information on types of radiation. I was browsing the EPA's site today and found this, which gives some useful information on different types of radioactive material. It's not really important for the situation here in Chiba, but it's useful to make sense of some of the terms being thrown around in the media.

There are a bunch of helpful data-driven resources out there to help better understand the situation in Fukushima.  Here's a link to some very helpful presentation slides made by Benjamin Monreal, Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics at UC Santa Barbara.  I encourage those of you who want to learn a little more about the situation in Fukushima to review the entire presentation.  I'll post several slides below that I found especially helpful.  Hopefully Dr. Monreal won't be upset...I added captions beneath each slide.

The atmospheric radiation that we've seen (in Chiba, at least) so far only makes sense to measure in microseiverts, so I feel pretty safe looking at the data.

Fukushima's design and fuel system bears some important differences from Chernobyl.  

This isn't a comfort to many people in Fukushima who had to evacuate their homes, but it clearly could've been much worse. 

The half-life of these isotopes is a little encouraging.  Wow, remove the top 10 cm of soil?  That sounds difficult to do right.  As anyone would quickly tell you, I'm not a scientist (just concerned and wanting to learn).  I wonder if that takes into account rainfall/rates of infiltration, etc.  An earlier slide in the presentation shows which elements (and thus their isotopes) are water soluble.  In any case, this gives you a sobering sense of what some of the long-term effects are going to be around Fukushima.

That's all for now.  I'll try to update again soon.