Your partner can make you more ‘radioactive’

SLEEPING next to your partner eight hours straight daily for one year gives you a greater amount of radioactivity

than the highest dose of radioactivity that could come from the crippled Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, according to the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute (PNRI) of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST).

Citing a report by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, DOST officials said that the radiological and safety impact of the breakdown of the nuclear plant in Fukushima Prefecture in northern Japan on the Philippines remains “insignificant.”

They added that the highest detected radioactivity concentration was recorded on March 24 at 131 nanosieverts.

Sleeping next to someone for eight hours a day for one year exposes a
person to a dose of 20,000 nanosieverts because of the natural radioactivity of the body.

In its latest bulletin, DOST-PNRI said that radiation levels remained at normal status.

Dousing fears of a nuclear crisis in the country, agency officials said that the raising by the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) of the alert level in the troubled nuclear plant in Japan should not be a cause for alarm.

DOST-PNRI assured the public that the move did not mean that the condition of the plant had worsened.

The situation, it said, was “in fact slowly getting better.”

“The INES rating is not an alert level like a typhoon signal or a volcano alert level and is not intended to be used as a basis for emergency response. On the other hand, the INES rating is similar to the magnitude scale for earthquakes,” DOST-PNRI explained.

Contaminated water from the Daiichi nuclear power plant had been transferred to secure storage tanks while contaminated rubble was cleared by remote-controlled equipment.

Although there were still minor releases of radioactive materials from the plant, the worst had occurred during the first weeks of the accident.

DOST-PNRI continues to monitor the situation at the crippled nuclear plant.  –Precious Carait, Special To The Manila Times