By TRB
Well, we can tell you this much - the medical marijuana crop might be harmed. Yes I know this because an "expert" in radiation poisoning has said so publicly. Mostly West Coast residents look at the radiation levels in water, milk and food and yes, the levels have increased. But again we turn to the "experts" who assure us that "This is nothing. Extremely low readings, really like a day at the beach only less radiation."
There is a friend on my Facebook page who lives on the West Coast. She is a writer and her name is Linda Mains. She does not seem to be an easily panicked person. But something happened to her in California. Something at the beach. She was there with her family and everything was just fine. She was in and out of the water.
Later that day, she was eating popcorn or something when one of her back teeth began to ache. Soon her jaw ached on one side. And not just a little; she needed pankillers. It took maybe a week, maybe longer for the pain to go away. That had never hapened to her before.
But Linda has her own theories. Like many she wonders about the high levels of radiation dumped into the sea from the Fukushima atomic energy plant in Japan. She wonders how tons of deadly radiation in the ocean will just become "absorbed" or dissipate into the air without harm to anyone.
I don't know about you, but sometimes I wonder about all those self described experts. Seems as though I've been listening to them my whole life. What it comes down to is this. Sometimes they are right and sometimes they are wrong. You can not obtain any official percentages of their accuracy. But, as a former news reporter, I have seen the experts wrong more often than right.
At least my memory tells me that. The tunnel was not going to cave in said the experts, but it did. Cigarettes were safe said he experts, but they were not. That chemical plant won't pollute your aquifer, but it did. Vietnam should be an easy war to win, but we didn't. That's not to say the "experts" haven't had many occasions when they've been right too. But I can't remember too many times when they have. I have seen them be half-right many times, when being half-right was a real tragedy.
I have even seen the "experts" change their minds on the level of this chemical or that in your food which might eventually kill you. So even the experts sometimes have to admit they missed the train stop by a few yards. A few yards would seem like miles if they are wrong about the potential danger to California.
Anyway let's get real about this while we consider this news. Did you know that on April 9, just a couple of weeks ago, the FDA discovered that the level of Cesium 137 radiation in milk in Montpellier, Vermont was much higher than it should have been. That's right. Vermont.
The biggest problem with many of California's radiation poisoning "experts" is that many believe the problem really isn't radiation poisoning as much as it is panic among the public.
Panic.
That is the one emotion government agencies will look you right in the eye and lie to avoid. Panic is simply not good for anybody, especially business, tourism and a general uneasiness among the population. Panic can be controlled, however, if we simply look at the facts and decide what would be the best way to alleviate the problem. Sometimes government forgets that people, given the chance, can do that.
Now, as a certified non-expert, who just reads the news and wonders, I have a few questions for the so-called experts.
The first one is the most obvious one. The Russians have said the problem in Fukushima could become worse than Chernobyl where the Russians had to pour a ten-foot thick layer of cement over an entire reactor and evacuate the citizens for miles around. Yet here it is a ready-to-melt-down reactor in Fukushima leaking deadly radiation that is getting more deadly all the time, and the Japanese aren't pouring any cement. Yet. Well experts, why not?
So UC Berkeley scientists take some test on the rainfall of April 5 and they come up with radiation figures 181 times the limit allowed by the FDA for drinking water. And they are not worried about the Cesium 137 or the Iodine 131 that is appearing in several areas it shouldn't - water, milk, fish. In fact, it is becoming difficult to get any real news out of the EPA. They seem flummoxed. Maybe they seem this way because this story began with a lie.
This is the lie, as told by the EPA. The radiation leaking daily into the sea in Japan would be seen only slightly on the West Coast and most likely no other place in the country. I guess I shouldn't look at it as an outright lie as much as just the talk of "experts," who, frankly, don't know much.
Maybe you should put that sushi aside for a moment and consider this. Unacceptable radiation levels originating from the Fukushima site have been discovered all the way in Massachusetts and in 12 other U.S. states. In Trenton, New Jersey, In Cincinnati, Ohio in Denver Colorado, in Chattanooga, Tenn.
Rain water in Salt Lake City, Utah on March 7 was measured to contain 8.1 radiation units of Iodine 131 when the FDA says the safe level is three. On March 22nd the iodine 131 level in Salt Lake City was all the way up to 92. It is back within normal limits. But was there any lasting damage done by those high rates? Do the expert know?
And then there is Montpelier, Vermont where the cows were found to have a high rate of radiation pollution in their milk on the second week of April.
Suddenly, you find yourself not caring what the experts say. Maybe you are looking across the sea as that out of control reactor sends nuclear waste into many parts of our lives. And you ask yourself, how can these unusually high amounts of radiation be safe? If the EPA has limits, then why do they have them? Why don't they simply raise the limits if it is safe to live with them while they are elevated? We already know it is not safe to live with high limits of radiation. But still authorities worry that the public will panic.
Cement will have to be dropped on the reactor in Japan. It has to be sealed. The experts have to stop all their messing around inside its deadly interior with their cute little robots and they have to put a sealed cover over it. The Russians know how to do such things. They have done them. They offered their expertise to put this reactor to sleep.
I say let them at it.
(Ed. Note: I would like to thank the LA Times, The Mercury News, the UK Daily Mail and the U.S. EPA for some of the information contained in this article.)
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