Safety of diving in Hawaii post-Fukushima?

[altaskier]

It's not the water that's a hazard - it's the radioactive particles in the water. Thousands of tons can actually be good; it dilutes things by quite a bit. Plus then there are gazillions of tons of water in the ocean between Japan and Hawaii to dilute things even more.

 

[Shaka Doug]

I heard there were a squizzillion gallons of water on the ocean... Fukushima? Please move on, nothing to see here...

LOOK! BRITTNEY SPEARS IS HOSTING A TV SHOW!! LOOK!!

The ocean around Hawaii is probably safer than the air and land is becoming up in the northern american continent. There are people noticing a serious increase in plant mutations throughout north america this spring. Mutated leaves, flowers and fruits, but, it's nature so we don't know everything about everything yet and it's probably just from a dry winter or late frost or something naturally occuring....

That's for both the scientists and the amatuer gardener to watch...

 

[Shaka Doug]

This just came out back in March. I think it's worth taking a look at:

[video=youtube;Xk1S04JnRq8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk1S04JnRq8&feature=player_embedded[/video]

From the description:

After the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that struck Japan on March 11, 2011, tons of debris was swept into the Pacific. Much of it is buoyant enough to float on the surface and can be moved around by small scale currents and large scale circulation patterns, such as the North Pacific Gyre. The gyre, bounded by the Kuroshio Current on the west, California Current on the east, and Equatorial Current on the south tends to entrain debris in the center of the Pacific basin, creating what is commonly known as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch." Though the bulk of the marine debris remains in the ocean for years in an area north of Hawaii, individual pieces are continually washing up on the continental and island shores that border the basin. NOAA's Marine Debris Program leads efforts to track and remove much of this existing trash, and is currently assessing the tsunami debris. Scientists as NOAA's Earths System Research Laboratory developed the debris dispersion model, shown here. Using five years of historical weather patterns, the model is used to approximate how debris will circulate across the basin.

Here's a new NOAA Map of ocean currents. The color changes represent a new year from 1 to 5 years time starting in West North Pacific by Japan moving across to East North Pacific by British Columbia down to California then swinging around to the south then west passing around Hawaii after about three to five years and thinning out a bit.


I guess that's why they are getting hot tuna's in Cali these days. I wonder if any will come here?

For me? I'm gonna keep on diving for a while... what else are you supposed to do, right? And I'll just keep picking up the crap I find along the edge...every little bit helps.

 

[grandizer52]

you need to get out more often....Do you walk around witha TLD?

Microwave ovens do not produce ionizing radiation which causes molecular bond breaking and chemical disruption; they only cause resonant vibration of water molecules leading to heating.

The dose in certain regions downwind of the plants at the time of the accident is still a bit high; you can see some good maps here. If you were to be in one of the "hot" regions with 20 microSieverts/hour dose rate, in a year you would get a total dose of 175 milliSieverts (mSv). On the one hand this is far below the 5000 mSv dose needed to kill half of those exposed; you would only slightly increase your statistical chance of dying from cancer. On the other hand this is far above the 3 mSv background dose that we all get from living on a planet with natural radioactivity in rocks (and radon gas from soils), and cosmic rays from the sun and other stars.

So we should not worry about Fukushima radiation in Hawaii. Most of Japan is also just fine. However, we should not say that in the Fukushima region there is less risk than from microwave ovens.

 

[tracydr]

Wear sunscreen.

 

[grandizer52]

I'm currenly in japan...no need for SPF-1200, no more than usual GODZILLA attacks....and I opened the microware to fast again...and still don't have any cool powers

 

[grandizer52]

Update...i got exposed...and now calling myself habu man

 

[archiebald]

The hilarious part is that anyone doing a round trip to a destination more than 8 hours away in a commercial airliner is going to expose themselves (oooer) to more radiation than you would get from living in a tent for a week 1km from the Fukushima plant.

I lived in Japan throughout the whole time (still here) and when I saw all the lemmings boarding flights in March/April 2011 to "escape the radiation", I laughed my socks off.

Sort of like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.

If you are in Hawaii, I would be more worried about lingering after effects of all the bomb test in the Marshall Islands.