\nII. Certain Minerals Can Reduce<\/span><\/em><\/strong> Absorption<\/span> of Harmful Radiation<\/a>
\nIII. Other Vitamins and Minerals Which Protect Against Radiation Damage<\/a>
\nIV. Antioxidants: Helpful Weapons Against Radiation Damage<\/a>
\nV. Other Things Which Offer Some Radiation Protection<\/a>
\nVI. What To Do If Exposed to Extremely High Doses of Radiation<\/a>
\n<\/a> <\/p>\n
Step 1: Reduce Exposure<\/h3>\n
Initially, we should reduce our exposure to radiation in the first place. For example, world renowned physicist Michio Kaku told his Japanese family and friends months ago that they should leave if they can.<\/p>\n
Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen<\/a> and physician Helen Caldicott<\/a> have both said that people should evacuate the Northern Hemisphere if one of the Fukushima fuel pools collapses. Gundersen said:<\/p>\n Move south of the equator if that ever happened, I think that\u2019s probably the lesson there.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Most residents of Hawaii and the Pacific coast of North American will – of course – stay.\u00a0 The entire population of the Northern Hemisphere can’t move down to the Southern Hemisphere, and most people aren’t inclined to move no matter what happens.\u00a0 But there are still many steps we can take to reduce exposure.<\/p>\n If you live in an area receiving any radiation exposure, you should also take off your shoes and leave them by the door (Asian style) and use a Hepa vacuum to get rid of excess dust<\/a> inside your house.<\/p>\n Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen explains<\/a> how to reduce exposure in case of a worst case scenario:<\/p>\n [In a worst case scenario, for example, if the fuel pool at Fukushima reactor 4 were to topple over<\/a>], I would close my windows, turn the air conditioner on, replace the filters frequently, damp mop, put a HEPA filter in the house and try to avoid as much of the hot particles as possible. You are not going to walk out with a Geiger counter and be in a plume that is going to tell you the meter. The issue will be on the West Coast, hot particles. And the solution there is HEPA filters and avoiding them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Radiation is concentrated in milk. Therefore, when high doses of radiation are being released into the air, we might want to avoid milk altogether for a couple of weeks or so<\/a>. (Radioactive iodine concentrates in milk, but it has a half-life of only 8 days<\/a>. So avoiding local milk for a couple of weeks<\/em> should help keep you safe.)<\/p>\n We should also be moderate with our consumption of fish caught off the Japanese, Hawaiian or West coast of the U.S. and Canada, as radiation can bioaccumulate in fish. See this<\/a>, this<\/a>, and this<\/a> … and the video below.)<\/p>\n Radiation also bioaccumulates<\/a> in mushrooms<\/a>. So it might be wise to consider avoiding mushrooms grown in Japan, Hawaii or on the Pacific Coast.<\/p>\n In addition, rain is one of the primary ways<\/em> that radiation is spread<\/a> outside of the vicinity of the nuclear accident. As a parent who doesn’t want to tell my kids they can’t play in the rain, none of this is fun to talk about … but during periods of extremely high airborne radiation releases, people might want to keep their kids out of heavy rain.<\/p>\n (At the end of this essay, we’ll tell you what to do if you have the misfortune of getting exposed to high doses of radiation.) It is well-known that potassium iodide works to protect against damage from radioactive iodine by saturating<\/em> our body (the thyroid gland, specifically) with harmless iodine, so that our bodies are unable to absorb radioactive<\/em> iodine from nuclear accidents.<\/p>\n For example, the World Health Organization notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n When taken at the appropriate dosage and within the correct time interval around exposure to radioactive iodine, KI [i.e. potassium iodide] saturates the thyroid gland with stable (non-radioactive) iodine. As a result, radioactive iodine will not be taken up and stored by the thyroid gland<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n KI only protects against one particular<\/em> radioactive element, radioactive iodine, which has a half life of only 8.02 days<\/a>. That means that the iodine loses half of its radioactivity within 8 days. For example, after the initial Fukushima melt-down, radioactive iodine was found in California kelp<\/a>. But the radioactive iodine quickly dissipated. *<\/p>\n The longer-term threat lies elsewhere. As the New York Times noted<\/a> \u2014 in addition to iodine-131 – the big danger is cesium:<\/p>\n Over the long term, the big threat to human health is cesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years.<\/p>\n At that rate of disintegration, John Emsley wrote in \u201cNature\u2019s Building Blocks\u201d (Oxford, 2001), \u201cit takes over 200 years to reduce it to 1 percent of its former level.\u201d<\/p>\n It is cesium-137 that still contaminates much of the land in Ukraine around the Chernobyl reactor.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Cesium-137 mixes easily with water and is chemically similar to potassium. It thus mimics how potassium gets metabolized in the body and can enter through many foods, including milk.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The Environmental Protection Agency says that \u2026 once dispersed in the environment \u2026 cesium-137 \u201cis impossible to avoid.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Cesium-137 is light enough to be carried by the wind a substantial distance<\/a>. And it is being carried by ocean currents towards the West Coast of North America<\/a>.<\/p>\n Fortunately – while little-known in the medical community – other harmless minerals can help “saturate” our bodies so as to minimize the uptake of other harmful types of radiation.<\/p>\n The U.S. Department of Defense’s Army Medical Department Center and School explained in its book Medical Consequences of Radiological and Nuclear Weapons<\/a><\/em> (Chapter 4<\/a>):<\/p>\n One of the keys to a successful treatment outcome is to reduce or eliminate the uptake of internalized radionuclides before they can reach the critical organ<\/strong>.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The terms \u201cblocking\u201d or \u201cdiluting\u201d agent can, in most cases, be used interchangeably. These compounds reduce the uptake of a radionuclide by saturating binding sites with a stable, nonradioactive element<\/strong>, thereby diluting the deleterious effect of the radioisotope. For example, potassium iodide is the FDA-recommended treatment to prevent radioactive iodine from being sequestered in the thyroid…. Nonradioactive strontium<\/span> compounds may also be used to block the uptake of radioactive strontium<\/strong>. In addition, elements with chemical properties similar to the internalized radio-nuclide are often used as blocking agents. For example, calcium<\/span>, and to a lesser extent phosphorus, can be used to block uptake of radioactive strontium<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The American Association of Physicists In Medicine<\/a> agrees<\/a>:<\/p>\n After the U.S. military conducted above-ground nuclear tests on Bikini Island, scientists found that adding potassium to the soil reduced the uptake of radioactive cesium<\/a> by the plants:<\/p>\n The first of a series of long-term field experiments was established on Bikini Island during the late 1980s to evaluate potential remediation techniques to reduce the uptake of cesium-137 into plants (Robison and Stone, 1998<\/a>). Based on these experiments, the most effective and practical method for reducing the uptake of cesium-137 into food crop products was to treat agricultural areas with potassium<\/strong> fertilizer (KCl).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n John Harte<\/a> – Professor at the University of California at Berkeley in Energy and Resources and Ecosystem Sciences, a PhD physicist who previously taught physics at Yale, a recipient of the Pew Scholars Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship, the Leo Szilard prize from the American Physical Society, and who has served on six National Academy of Sciences Committees and has authored over 170 scientific publications, including six books <\/span>– notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n Marine fish are usually about 100 times lower in cesium-137 than are freshwater fish because potassium<\/strong>, which is more abundant in seawater, blocks uptake of cesium<\/strong> by marine organisms.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The same is true in mammals. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n Cesium is a close chemical analogue of potassium. Cesium has been shown to compete with potassium<\/strong> for transport through potassium channels and can also substitute for potassium in activation of the sodium pump and subsequent transport into the cell.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Elimination rates of cesium may be altered by potassium intake. Following the intraperitoneal injection of 137 Cs in rats, a basal diet supplemented with 8\u201411% potassium resulted in cesium clearance of 60 days compared to about 120 days for rats receiving the unsupplemented basal diet that contained 1% potassium Dr. Ingrid Kohlstadt<\/a> – a medical doctor with a master’s of public health, on the Faculty at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, editor of the best-seller Food and Nutrients in Disease Management – says that the same is true for humans<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n Plutonium<\/em> is treated like iron<\/em> by our bodies. So getting enough iron will help reduce absorption of plutonium<\/a>. And see this<\/a>.<\/p>\n Here are the recommended daily allowances (RDA) for various minerals (data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture<\/a>):<\/p>\n You can buy calcium<\/a>, potassium<\/a>, iron<\/a> supplements. You can also buy non-radioactive strontium<\/a> supplements. Or incorporate foods high in calcium<\/a>, potassium<\/a>, and iron<\/a>. A number of scientific studies conclude that Vitamin A<\/strong> helps to protect us from radiation. See this<\/a>, this<\/a> and this<\/a>.<\/p>\n Numerous studies show that Vitamin C<\/strong> helps to protect the body against radiation<\/a>.<\/p>\n Vitamin D<\/strong> can help repair damage to DNA<\/a>, and may help protect against low-level radiation. As Science Daily reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n Radiological health expert Daniel Hayes, Ph.D., of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene suggests that a form of vitamin D could be one of our body’s main protections against damage from low levels of radiation. Writing in the International Journal of Low Radiation, Hayes explains that calcitriol, the active form of vitamin D, may protect us from background radiation and could be used as a safe protective agent before or after a low-level nuclear incident.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n “Vitamin D by its preventive\/ameliorating actions should be given serious consideration as a protective agent against sublethal radiation injury, and in particular that induced by low-level radiation,” concludes Hayes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n It takes a couple of weeks or months to build up our body’s levels of Vitamin D. You cannot just pop a bunch of pills and raise your Vitamin D level. You should never take more than the recommended dose, and – even if you did – it wouldn’t raise your vitamin D level all at once. As such, we should start now<\/em> …<\/p>\n Vitamin E<\/strong> has also shown promise in protecting from low-level radiation, at least in animal studies. Here<\/a> and here<\/a> (the natural form may be healthier for you than the synthetic form).<\/p>\n Here are the RDAs for vitamins (data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture<\/a>):<\/p>\n You can buy vitamin supplements, or eat foods rich in vitamins A<\/a>, C<\/a>, D<\/a> and E<\/a>.<\/p>\n Selenium<\/strong> also helps protect our bodies from radiation. See this<\/a>, this<\/a> and this<\/a>. \u00a0 Brazil nuts are the best food source<\/a> of selenium. (And – given that the New England Journal of Medicine says that eating nuts helps us live longer<\/a> – eating a handful of mixed raw nuts every day makes some sense.)<\/a><\/p>\n It may sound strange, but it is well-documented that antioxidants<\/strong><\/em> help to protect against damage from radiation<\/a>. Specifically, one of the main ways in which low-level ionizing radiation damages our bodies is by the creation of free radicals. (This 2-minute BBC video<\/a>shows how damaging free radicals can be to your health.)<\/p>\n For example, Columbia University explains<\/a> the damaging effects of low-level radiation through free radical creation:<\/p>\n\n
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\n<\/a> <\/p>\nCertain Minerals Can Reduce<\/span><\/em><\/strong> Absorption<\/span> of Harmful Radiation<\/h3>\n
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![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Calcium-for-Strontium.jpg\" "\\"Calcium")
<\/a>As does the book published in 2006 by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, called Weapons of Mass Casualties and Terrorism Response<\/em>:<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Calcium-for-Strontium-90.jpg\" "\\"Calcium")
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\n(Richmond and Furchner 1961). After 20 days on the diets, rats receiving supplemental potassium had body burdens of 137 Cs that were one-half those of the rats not receiving supplemental potassium. This finding shows that supplemental potassium reduces the uptake and increases the elimination of ingested 137 Cs<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Kohlstadt-update1.jpg\" "\\"Kohlstadt")
<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/RDA-Minerals1.jpg\" "\\"RDA")
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\n<\/a> <\/p>\nOther Vitamins and Minerals Which Protect Against Radiation Damage<\/h3>\n
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![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/RDA-Vitamins1.jpg\" "\\"RDA")
<\/a><\/p>\nAntioxidants: Helpful Weapons Against Radiation Damage<\/h3>\n
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