So are the elements that constitute YOU.
"Let's consider the source of the nearly 8000 radioactive events that take place in our bodies every second."
Body Activity HTML
So are the elements that constitute YOU.
"Let's consider the source of the nearly 8000 radioactive events that take place in our bodies every second."
Body Activity HTML
This is a matter that should be of interest to all working musicians because we were, and still are in some cases forced to perform in highly unhealthy environments polluted with radioactive cigarette smoke. That's my opinion. I may not be a degreed scientist or research author. But I'm not a ghost writer either.
okcrum, my friend, I think you've cited some highly technical propaganda and double talk that attempts to deny a mere fact. There is no doubt whatsoever scientifically that any form of cigarette smoke inhaled at any concentration is potentially highly dangerous. The matter of radioactivity in cigarette smoke has been adjudicated in US federal courts under class action where the evidence demonstrating big tobacco companies knew of this specific danger and chose to ignore it was unassailable.
Originally, tobacco was organically grown, but this came to an end when demands for nitrates to make high explosives needed for the war effort in WWII forced tobacco growers to switch to calcium phosphate fertilizer. Phosphate rock is the source of the radioactive elements uranium, thorium and radium. During manufacture of the fertilizer
most of this is removed when the phosphate rock is dissolved in an acidic solution.
But not all of it. Trace amounts of the above radioactive elements are therefore present in commercially produced calcium phosphate fertilizer at various concentrations depending on the manufacturing processes employed ($$$), and also other naturally occurring factors not all of which are predictable.
Obviously, whatever trace radioactive elements are still present in fertilizer will have the potential to be absorbed into tobacco plants themselves, and this is exactly what happens. These radioactive elements naturally decay into radon gas, and this radon is present in tobacco smoke (when the tobacco plants are fertilized with calcium phosphate). Radon is extraordinarily dangerous when inhaled because it naturally decays into Polonium 210, a radioactive isotope that plates out on the surface of lung tissue, irradiating any tissue near it with strong alpha radiation. Think firing a cannonball into a glass menagerie, only on a cellular level. If the body can keep up with repairing the damage to the cells, all is well. Otherwise, cancer will eventually be the outcome. Radon may also be absorbed into the blood plasma via the lungs leading to deposition of sub-microscopic particles of Polonium 210 elsewhere in the body, with the same potential outcome.
No one is going to tell you that lung cancer, and cancer per se was relatively rare prior to World War II. Yet, people were smoking like industrial chimneys back then. Now, cancer and heart disease are the two biggest killers in the country. There are many causes for this, of course, but it is indisputable that it was found that tobacco plants grow like weeds on calcium phosphate fertilizer, making tobacco production unbelievably efficient and sending profits from tobacco products through the roof. Memo's and other documents produced in federal court showed that tobacco company scientists and physicians had warned top executives of the danger of continuing with the use of the calcium phosphate fertilizer, and that said executives decided to plan ahead for what they knew would eventually be lawsuits over the matter, and go forward with making the big profits anyway.
Let's just take a brief look at the propaganda you cited.
<No attempt has been made to express the dose that might be delivered to the body by the isotopes incorporated within the body. The are two reasons for this. First, dose is defined as the energy delivered to a sensitive organ or tissue, divided by the mass of that tissue or organ. It is this author's belief that we do not know the target we should use to calculate dose for any of these radioelements.>
Well, when an ostensible research scientist / author cites their "belief", you can bank on somebody having paid them to believe it. Science isn't about what an author may believe, and you learn after a while to interpret comments like this for what they are. To say something like, "...we do not know the target we should use to calculate dose for any of these radioelements...", is pure poppycock and balderdash. What target? Are we at the firing range? You don't have to know how to
calculate the target when it is indisputable that radioactive elements and radioisotopes are extraordinarily dangerous to inhale or ingest and should be avoided
when possible at
any level of concentration. Good grief. He wants you to stop thinking while he calculates?
<The second of my reasons for not calculating dose has to do with my belief that the cell is actually a proper target for dose calculation, but we do not know how to account for repair processes which we know do exist within the body.>
That point may be true but it's purely academic. We don't have to know how to
statistically account for the bodies repair processes when exposed to internalized radioactive isotopes, for example, when we know the undeniable outcome of such exposure in such a tragic number of cases. This is all just pure #$%$# #$%$#.
But hay, if anybody still wants to believe that any form of cigarette smoke is not potentially (and in all likelihood is) radioactive or that it does not place you
in extreme danger of lung and other forms of cancer for this reason, go ahead on. Darwin had a point, you know.
There is no safe level of radioactive isotopes or elements that can be inhaled or otherwise ingested into the human body. It's easy to find documentation from the government on the dangers posed by huge mountains of tailings (phosphogypsum) left over from manufacturing calcium phosphate fertilizer. Everybody admits that. You have to dig deep to learn of the problem with radon in cigarette smoke. I hesitate to speak of why this is so here on TB because it is a political issue. I originally learned of this matter from medical doctors I was working with, all of whom are either dead or have retired at this point. Do some research and see what you come up with. If need be, I will dig up some references from the government itself, but I'm busy and would rather not take any more time. At least I tried.
