Your at more risk from the food you eat then a whiff of air coming over from Japan.
"VANCOUVER - Despite the growing severity of the nuclear incident in Japan, the radioactivity released into the atmosphere from a nuclear power plant crippled by the earthquake and tsunami should not be a concern in British Columbia.
Japanese authorities informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Monday night that radioactivity was being released directly into the atmosphere. Radiation dose rates as high as 400 millisievert per hour were detected at the nuclear plant, although these levels have since fallen, the IAEA said in an update.
Jean-Claude Brodovitch, a senior lecturer in nuclear chemistry at Simon Fraser University, said the main risk is from radioactive iodine, which has a very short half-life and would be very diluted if it was to travel here from Japan.
"Even if there is a serious release in Japan, whatever would come here would be extremely diluted," Brodovitch said. "Iodine has a one-week half-life, so in two weeks it would be gone. It would take a couple days to get here, depending on the wind.
It's a serious concern, but really only in the immediate neighbourhood of the event, within 20 or 30 kilometres."
However, in 1986, radioactive iodine fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear incident was detected in seaweed in B.C. waters, Brodovitch told The Sun in an interview.
"If we picked up something here, it travelled around the globe," Brodovitch said.
Iodine-131 is absorbed by the thyroid and is associated with thyroid cancer. Potassium iodide pills are used to saturate the thyroid with iodine so that it won't absorb the radioactive iodine.
The Japanese government has distributed potassium iodide pills, but no decision has yet been taken on their administration, the IAEA said in an update.
Brodovitch said
British Columbians would be better off spending their money on a new earthquake kit, because the odds are much higher that an earthquake will hit B.C. than that the radiation fallout from Japan will have any ill effects on their health."
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