Most radiation that humans come into contact with exists naturally in the environment and is harmless to human health, the Atomic Energy Council (AEC) said yesterday, adding that people should not be overly concerned about radiation hazards in their daily lives.
Last month, three AEC employees spent 10 days traveling around the country on their bikes. Five flat tires, two falls into gutters and some 300 or more radiation checks later, the trio returned to Taipei with data showing that radiation levels nationwide are within safety levels, AEC Radiation Monitoring Center director Huang Ching-chung (黃景鐘) said.
“Two-thirds of the radiation people experience in life exists in the environment naturally, while another third comes from medical treatments such as X-rays or MRI scans,” Huang said.
PHOTO: CNA
Radiation coming from nuclear plants or other nuclear devices combined contributes to less than 1 percent of total radiation, he added.
What is also important to know is that radiation — measured in alpha, beta or gamma rays — produces the same effect on human bodies despite its source, Huang said.
For example, cosmic gamma rays would have the same effect on the body as gamma rays produced by a nuclear plant, he said.
In terms of the radiation levels measured by the three bikers, “the highest gamma ray dose was 0.050 microsieverts per hour (μSv/h), measured on the Northern Cross-Island Highway (北橫公路), while the lowest was 0.023 μSv/h around Hualien,” Huang said.
“However, even if one looks at the ‘double’ amount, in reality they are both far below the 0.2 μSv/h safety level published by the AEC, and the differences should be regarded as insignificant and ascribed to natural variations,” he said.
The same conclusion also applies to areas to which the bikers did not trek, such as high mountains, where radiation levels are naturally stronger.
“Three major sources contribute to natural ionizing radiation in the environment — cosmic rays, gamma rays from the earth and sources in the atmosphere including radon gas,” Huang said.
Cosmic rays are stronger in higher latitudes, thereby strongest at the North Pole, Huang said, adding that high altitude regions atop mountains like Alishan are also affected more strongly by the rays.
But as the nation as a whole has a low level of radiation, the place with the “highest radiation” is not scientifically meaningful, and the public should not panic and avoid hiking even if the radiation level is above 0.2μSv/h, Huang said,
Citing the world’s four areas with the strongest levels of natural background radiation — Brazil’s Guarapari, China’s Yangjiang, India’s Kerala and Iran’s Ramsar — Huang said that while Guarapari is a prime tourist destination drawing crowds of visitors with its natural mud baths, major studies conducted in Yangjiang have found that nearby residents suffer from no long-term health maladies because of the radiation.
“The dose of natural background radiation in those places is hundreds of times higher than the 0.2 μSv/h level,” Huang said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching