rcd@opus.UUCP (Dick Dunn) (04/26/84)
<> Let's be a little careful with terms. Radioactivity covers a multitude of sins. From a recent posting: >Whoa! What about Carbon-14??? I believe that it is a significant part >of coal. This is a good place to start. OK, coal is mostly carbon, but carbon-14 is a very tiny component - the only reference I have shows it as below .01%, but I don't know how much less. Still, a more relevant question is what sort of radioactivity you get - it turns out that C 14 decays by emitting a beta particle (an electron) of about 150 KeV. That's not totally innocuous, but it's not terrible either. There are also questions of half-life (about 5700 years, unless you're a creationist:-), how it's transported, what happens when it gets into your body (does it accumulate or is it gradually eliminated), etc. Only after you get some decent answers to these questions does it make any sense to try to compare levels of radioactivity from various sources. -- ...Cerebus for dictator! Dick Dunn {hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd (303) 444-5710 x3086