Radiation

[Comic  (March 19, 2011)]

Radiation

A larger version of this picture can be found here: http://xkcd.com/radiation/. The original blog post "Radiation Chart" can be found here: http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/03/19/radiation-chart/

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Some features still not explained If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

Transcript

Title: Radiation Dose Chart

Subtitle: This is a chart of the ionization dose a person can absorb from various sources. The unit for absorbed dose is "sievert" (Sv), and measures the effect a dose of radiation will have on the cells of the body. One sievert (all at once) will make you sick, and too many more will kill you, but we safely absorb small amounts of natural radiation daily. Note: The same number of sieverts absorbed in a shorter time will generally cause more damage, but your cumulative long-term dose plays a big role in things like cancer risk.

Blue section:

1 blue square: Sleeping next to someone (0.05 μSv)

1.8 blue squares: Living within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant for a year (0.09 μSv)

2 blue squares: Eating one banana (0.1 μUsv)

6 blue squares: Living within 50 miles of a coal power plant for a year (0.3 μSv)

20 blue squares: Arm X-Ray (1 μSv)

25 blue squares: Extra dose from spending one day in an area with higher-than-average natural background radiation, such as the Colorado plateau (1.2 μSv)

100 blue squares: Dental x-ray (5 μSv)

200 blue squares: Background dose received by an average person over one normal day (10 μSv)

800 blue squares: Airplane flight from New York to LA (400 μSv)

Green section:

1 green square: Chest x-ray (20 μSv)

3 green squares: All the does in the blue chart combined (~60 μSv)

2 green squares: Extra dose to Tokyo in weeks following Fukushima accident (40 μSv

3.5 green squares: Living in a stone, brick, or concrete building for a year (70 μSv)

4 green squares: Average total dose from the Three Mile Island accident to someone living within 10 miles (80 μSv)

5 green squares: Approximate total dose received at Fukushima Town Hall over two weeks following accident (100 μSv)

12.5 green squares: EPA yearly release limit for a nuclear power plant (250 μSv)

19.5 green squares: Yearly dose from natural potassium in the body (390 μSv)

20 green squares: Mammogram (400 μSv)

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Discussion

There are some errors/problems in the sources Randal listed on the image:

-left an http out on the beginning of the 2nd source

-source 3 and 4 are inl-oversight, not inl_oversight

-source 7 isn't available any more due to the restructure of their site, but it might have been fine when randal made it

-source 11 should be fact-sheets, not fzact-sheets

-source 12 is a 404 (and the double underscore seems a bit strange), and I can't find the original page

-the last source seems to be a dead domain

Kirdneh (talk) 21:47, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

It's probably important to note that this was released shortly after, and due to, the Tohoku Earthquake and the beginning of the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant. 108.162.215.115 07:45, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Does anyone else have the problem where the previous link at the top leads to "comic -1," a nonexistent page, the next link leads to comic 1, the comic is number "#," and the article is titled "Radiation" instead of "(comic number): Radiation?" 108.162.219.138 14:13, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

There is no "comic number" because this was a blog post, not one of the numbered comics. 108.162.215.189 04:50, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

I can't seem to scale the image properly. It remains pixelated.--Forrest (talk)15:51, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Interestingly enough, i found a poster of this in my highschool science lab. Whiskey07 (talk) 10:44, 26 August 2015 (UTC)