SomeCallMeChris wrote:

A few studies have been done that found counter-intuitive results that suggest very low radiation exposure is also unhealthy.

You need to post these studies so we can critique the source.

I'm calling bullshit on these studies and this general idea of "not enough radiation is unhealthy" though until I see them, especially if they are suggesting you need exposure to high energy particles. That stuff WILL cause cancer and you are better off avoiding high energy radiation.

Japanese are overly superstitious, arguably more than what I'm use to back in the US. But this takes the cake.

OP, my suggestion is avoid these springs.

Hnhh, despite my best intentions to go straight to bed, I googled.

I don't care for the tone of this page (it seems to be trying to make some political points or other) but it has a lot of interesting links on the other side of the radiation question.

http://knowledgeofhealth.com/is-a-littl … d-for-you/

Still doesn't answer the important question of just how radioactive the onsen is, of course. I also don't see anything quite exactly like the study/studies I was thinking of.

I went to a martial arts gasshuku held at a (name withheld) temple in Japan.  For many years, the water there was supposed to be wonderful for your health, etc.  Apparently, at some point, someone had the water analyzed, and the well has been shut down, and there are signs at the temple about avoiding the water.

I'd stay away from the radium onsen, personally, and ignore any local lore.  Despite alleged health benefits, I've never seen any indication that radiation was good for you, other than as a cancer treatment, where "better than the alternative" would be a better description.

There is, apparently, a substantial amount of evidence that low levels of radiation are good for you.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18648595

Of course, political and financial interests are all mixed in, but I did find the above paper interesting if only for the wide number of other papers that it in turn cites to back its claims and give a wide overview of the theory.

I also found the notion that we have reverted to amputation for antibiotic-resistant gangrene rather than using the priorly successful x-ray therapy is kind of disturbing though I haven't yet gone into reading up on that particular topic.

However, since my rather offhand 'there was a study once that I recall' post I've been reading up on this radiation hormesis theory in my spare time for a couple of days. There's a -lot- of evidence for it.

I'm not at this point saying it's true, but I am saying that it's more than an urban legend and is in fact a theory with a fair amount of evidence behind it. (France is apparently saying the same thing, at least as I read quoted statements, though pro-hormesis writers claim a bit more than that. I don't know if they are exaggerating or if I just haven't read the right announcements from the French authorities.)

I had thought it was only a curious effect that only mattered to people who lived in areas with near-zero background radiation, but apparently it's a good bit more important than that.

Well, fair enough, it was Kashima.

I followed some of the links in the "radiation hormesis" article.  I found the part about atomic bomb survivors doing better was rather odd.  Here's a quote from another study:

An excess of solid cancers became apparent approximately ten years after radiation exposure. With increasing follow-up, excess risks of most cancer types have been observed, the major exceptions being chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, and pancreatic, prostate and uterine cancer.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19454804

While it's possible that some radiation exposure is good for you, that's a very different statement that people will benefit from more radiation exposure.  We all get radiation exposure already.  And people seem to be able to interpret studies in different ways.

SomeCallMeChris wrote:

Ia 0.2-0.6 cSv range (which if that's standard metric naming, would mean .002-.006 Sv, I believe) ... in other words, people that were lucky enough to get what should probably be called something even less than 'low dose' (microdose? centidose? very tiny dose?)

This actually isn't so low.  0.6 cSv is enough that the increase in cancer risk is measurable, though less than 0.5%.  It's about the same as a chest CT scan.

(A mammogram is 0.2 cSv)

Last edited by Tzadeck (2012 April 01, 10:36 pm)

At any rate, one cSv is 10,000 microsieverts (a sievert is 1,000,000 microsieverts), and I'm guessing onsen are in the 1-20 microsievert per hour range.   And that's nothing to worry about.  But it would be nice if we had the name of the actually onsen to know for sure.

(Sorry, I know I'm not really paying attention to the articles posted)

13 microsieverts is 0.0013 cSv, which is the amount at the onsen I went to.  As I said, that's high enough that the Nuclear Safety Comission would recommend you stay indoors, and it's much more than Fukushima city, which is evacuated.
(The number in Fukushima city may seem low.  That's because most of the radiation from the plant goes in a different direction.  In the right spots, even at 30km away from the reactor the number was as high as 170 microsieverts per hour at its worst)

So when you compare it to a CT scan at .6 cSv, a CT scan is a damn lot (many people have to get multiple scans, so actually a lot of people increase their cancer risk by as much as 2 percent, which is ridiculously high).  I pointed it out just because there were a lot of much smaller numbers in this thread.

Last edited by Tzadeck (2012 April 02, 12:10 am)

If you fear radiation exposure at an osen, you might also want to inquire if there are any nearby radioactive waste sites from the Fukushima incident. Apparently the waste is being distributed nationwide so everyone can share the suffering, or future suffering of cancer. Sounds crazy, but here's a link to the government documents along with the translation:

http://www.debito.org/?p=9547

Norman wrote:

If you fear radiation exposure at an osen, you might also want to inquire if there are any nearby radioactive waste sites from the Fukushima incident. Apparently the waste is being distributed nationwide so everyone can share the suffering, or future suffering of cancer. Sounds crazy, but here's a link to the government documents along with the translation:

You should really research this more on your own, and you'll find that nothing dangerous is going on.

i read the japanese part. (well, the 1st email, anyway)

They want to clear the debris from the earthquake. But people are worried about the debris from Fukushima, so they're gonna have to disperse it to stop there being an outcry.

It's nothing to do with "spreading the cancer", it's to do with appeasing the public.

Debris from certain parts of Fukushima, sure, it's likely going to come with some radioactive material on it. However, debris with bits of radioactive material on it is NOT the same as "radioactive waste". (EDIT: of course, technically, it is radioactive waste so you can call it that i guess, but the difference between that and the kind of radioactive waste that is a direct by-product of the nuclear process is huge, so it just seems like waaaay overstating it and fear-mongering to use that term to me.) It's not going in your food, it's going to a garbage dump, so unless you happen to work on a garbage dump, you probably don't have any good reason to worry. And if you do work on a garbage dump, i still imagine you have far, far, far less chance of getting cancer from it than you do from living next to a coal plant, or mining lead, or whatever.

Given that they're not going to be regenerating the exclusion zone for a good while, i don't even know if any of the waste will actually come from there. It's probably from areas of Fukushima that actually are safe to live in, they just need the debris cleared, but people are unwilling to accept it because of "nuclear fear syndrome". That's how i read it, anyway.

Last edited by IceCream (2012 April 02, 4:14 am)

IceCream wrote:

It's probably from areas of Fukushima that actually are safe to live in...

Do you actually believe there are areas in Fukushima that are safe to live in? You are aware that the levels of radiation exposure for nuclear plant workers and the public considered dangerous before the Fukushima diaster were "adjusted" following the meltdown, are you not? Well, I guess all of us are given the freedom to believe in whatever we want to. It is just unfortunate for the children in that area who will be attending public schools so close to ground zero because their parents have such an easy going opinion about these matters.

Last edited by Norman (2012 April 02, 8:28 am)

tbh, i don't really know what to believe about that. There's so many conflicting writings about radioactive things.

However, there are many, many journalists who consistently overemphasise the risks and scare-monger as much as they can regarding nuclear stuff. When you actually look at the health reports on the effects of Chernobyl from the WHO, you see a completely different picture from the one that journalists paint. For instance, i'm sure you've seen pictures of hospitals with children with horrific genetic mutations from the Chernobyl disaster? Well, they could have gone to your local hospital and taken those same pictures, because the WHO report found no significant increase in genetic mutations after Chernobyl. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/rel … index.html . Neither did they find significant increases in cancer, apart from thyroid cancer in children, who should have been given iodine to prevent this, and were given it in Japan. In fact, the biggest rise was in mental problems and fatalism among the population, which is probably at least part due to the scare-mongering the media did.

Coal, and heavy metals remain a far bigger health risk to populations, imo. But how often do you see people get as worked up about the health risks of these things as they do about even a mention of radioactivity? Yes, there are health risks with that too, but the responses often seem to border on hysteria.

Also, the regulations for radiation exposure for nuclear workers were extremely tight before the disaster. They were far below what is considered to be the level where there would be an increased risk of cancer, and have remained below that even with the raise. So the raising of the "acceptable level" doesn't necessarily mean anything on it's own, really.