But the odd one gets a high reading if it comes straight in off the fell,
Do we know if that happens in other areas? Do we know if this is an area of high naturam radioactivity? Can we compare the trigger levels to anything?
Absent hard information, this is just innuendo and fearmongering. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
What use are those to the average Independent reader? But I already indicated that you just would have to look up UK regulations for the precise numbers.
and you will note that they don't even say that there are actually sheep above that level
You then quote out of context. What do you think "and has to be slaughtered." means?
Do we know if that happens in other areas?
Yes - application of the same emergency orders:
No sheep can be moved out of any of these areas without a special licence, under Emergency Orders imposed in 1986. Sheep that have higher than the permitted level of radiation have to be marked with a special dye that does not wash off in the rain, and have to spend months grazing on uncontaminated grass before they are passed as fit to go into the food chain.
Do we know if this is an area of high naturam radioactivity? Can we compare the trigger levels to anything?
Now I submit those are valid points, but as the article mentions peat bogs, I suspect natural radioactivity is out of the question, and accumulated Chernobyl contamination is the obvious first suspect. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Are you being serious, DoDo? What use is actual, relevant, hard information to the average paper reader? Indeed. I suppose they coul also go and log in on the relevant website to read the report, why does the press need to mention it at all? And if the information is out there, why ask anyone to prepare a report at all? People can go make their own measurements, themselves, if they care about it.
You then quote out of context.
I quoted the ONLY instance in the article of a (indirect) mention of an actual exceedance of the (unknown) trigger levels.
I suspect natural radioactivity is out of the question
Prove it.
It should not be up to anyone else to prove the negaitve of this. It's up to you to prove such allegations. Your anti-nuclear stance is blinding you. Let's hold nuclear energy to the highest standards, but that means that criticism should also be made with some (ideally, the same) standards of transparency and verification.
That article of the Independent and your own comments totally fail any kind of reasonable standard for proof. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
High natural radioactivity is usually associated with bedrock, magmatic or volcanic. Peat bogs are - soil. Heavy waterfall and no outflow makes them sinks for anything washed out of the atmosphere. Another point against natural sources is the short half-life of caesium.
I did some homework in another post, but I couldn't find much on Cs background levels in connection with either peat bogs or sheep in Britain. (I found one document with data on tested sheep from Northern Ireland with most below 1 Bq/kg and a maximum of 5.43 Bq/kg. I also found a worldwide survey for fishes, values ranged from 0.2 to 2.1 Bq/kg.) I'm certain if natural levels would be anywhere near that value, pro-nuclear sites would have the info. Instead, I find those mentioning the sheep issue stress the reduction in the number of affected farms. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Nutrient-poor and acidic, a bog is a peat-accumulating wetland comprised of acidophilic vegetation, particularly Sphagnum mosses species and ericad shrubs. Although bogs are water-saturated, they have virtually no inflow or outflow of mineral-bearing water. Isolated from the groundwater table, their only source of nutrients is precipitation.
Read here. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Heavy rainfall caused minerals such as iron to be washed out or leached from the surface layers of the thin soil, in a process known as paludification. These were deposited lower down in the soil profile where they formed an impermeable layer known as an iron pan (see Figure 2). As water cannot move down through such a layer, the soil surface became waterlogged. Under these conditions the accumulation and spread of peat was made possible.
There are nice figures for explanation. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Well, I didn't, you saw me in the process of self-education :-)
My image of a peat bog was (a) a German low-land filled-up lake, or (b) a Scottish or Cornish hilltop moor (the versions I have seen personally, and the ones I read of as being used for 'atmospheric composition archeology'), so blanket bogs were a news to me. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Wikipedia: Readers of The Independent
One could say that a stereotypical 'Independent' reader is well-educated, a Liberal Democrat or perhaps Labour voter, anti-war and interested in issues about the environment. These are directly reflected onto the newspaper's style. The paper's editorial line favours the implementation of proportional representation, and tackling climate change. It often has critical front page spreads about George Bush and many articles by female journalists. Thus it is seen as an educated tabloid newspaper (a 'compact' newspaper).
The question is whether the paper's "educated" readership will put their concern over climate change above a data-driven discussion of the facts and a critical discussion of the sources.
I think the problem is that newspapers don't feel that they have to provide references to additional reading or to their sources more explicitly than a mention in passing.
It may also be an issue that the environmentally-conscious editorial line is an ideological position, and so it's ok to "fix the intelligence around the policy". guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper
This is not at all scaremongering, but a regular theme, ever since the farm restrictions were predicted to be over in six weeks ack in 1986.
Using a March 2003 article, the number of farms under monitoring for Caesium contamination: more than 9000 in June 1986, according to a December 2000 BBC article just below 400 then, 386 in March 2003, 375 now. Threshold: 1,000Bq/kg. There is a special regulation to move sheep that has more than this to lower areas, away from the pet bogs, for a few weeks and wait for contamination levels to fall. The 2003 article also mentions that the then prospective new EU members wanted to impose an EU-wide threshold to their lower, 600 Bq/kg threshold.
More on farmland contamination tests in the UK here. No word about background levels, but on differences between soils, and isotopes.
Now, with a dosis factor of 1.3*10-8, 1000 Bq/kg would make 0.13 mSv per kg meat eaten, so one would have to eat a helluva' lot to get to the 20 mSv per year health safety limit, but not that much to get above, say, the German background level of 2.1 mSv/year, or even the German average exposure (i.e. involving non-natural sources like X-ray screeners) of 4.1 mSv/year. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
So the trigger level means that you need to eat 30kg/y of that animal to get the equivalent to "natural" exposure. That's not an unsignificant quantity of meat, which suggests that the threshhold is pretty low, which is fine, but does makes it kind of irresponsible to talk about the "long lasting effects" of Chernobyl when only the "odd animal" ever gets to be above such a lowish level in terms of practical consequences. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
