How to Cure Radiation Toxicity
LONG BEACH, California - Cary Harrison (KPFK's Go Harrison! Facebook Japan updates) appeared at this year's Health Freedom Expo to moderate a panel on radiation exposure. He is currently on his way to Japan to help in any way he can. He's traveling by boat as an ersatz worker and plans to become a Merchant Marine, experiencing a typhoon near Hawaii. But his KPFK radio show is still on the air (Mondays, 2:00 pm). One of the panelists offers insight into what radiation levels if any are safe. Unfortunately, according to the Petkau effect, chronic low exposure is worse than be massive irradiation levels. This counterintuitive finding was discovered by accident in previous disasters. Listen to a recording of this weekend's panel discussion which talks about detoxification from radiation sickness and prevention through good immunity and low-stress levels, at the KPFK Audio Archives (March 28, 2011 at 2:00 PM). The Japan Mercy Fund (win an electric scooter) NOTE: Eat seaweed (kombu has more iodine than kelp), strawberries, and miso soup. Avoid iodine pills, which are toxic.
Richard Knox (NPR) 
Japanese Buddhist monk Tanaka Tokuun, who was evacuated from Fukushima prefecture, looks over an instrument measuring radiation levels (Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images).
Why We May Not Learn Much New About Radiation Risks
When it comes to health effects from low radiation doses, scientists don't know beans. To be more precise, doses below 100 millisieverts are in a gray zone. Safety standards -- such as the one that limits drinking water exposure for infants to less than about 2 millisieverts -- are based on extrapolation from the best data scientists have.
Those figures come mainly from a 60-year study of health effects of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. That was a unique research opportunity, and one hopes it remains that way. But some scientists think the Fukushima power plant disaster -- the second-worst nuclear power accident in history -- offers another precious opportunity to learn more about what happens to people exposed to radioactivity in the millisievert range.
An article posted Wednesday by The New Scientist quotes experts who say there's no time to lose in setting up a study that would map radiation doses and monitor the health of those who've been exposed in the Japanese incident. One of those experts points to the Hiroshima-based Radiation Effects Research Foundation as the obvious candidate to do the work. It has conducted the six-decade-long project following atomic-bomb survivors. More
