DailyDirt: Don't Just Give People Numbers... Draw Charts?
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
A number is often meaningless without a unit attached to it, but sometimes a unit is useless if it's an unfamiliar one. Given all the reporting on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a few helpful folks have created some charts to better explain what the radiation dosages mean. These graphs aren't perfect, but they attempt to put some uncommon figures into context. If you don't know what a sievert is, check out these charts.- XKCD has a chart that illustrates radiation dosages to help folks understand what the sievert unit means. No stick figures were harmed in the production of this chart. (Also, feel free to copy and distribute it because it's public domain material.) [url]
- A slightly more colorful chart of what a sievert unit means is available for purchase -- with all the money going to help with the disaster relief effort. The logarithmic scale on this one is kind of easy to miss on this chart, though... [url]
- Here's a chart that's a bit more complicated to read, but it also incorporates exposure time. Unfortunately, Roy G Biv is apparently not helpful for determining the order of severity. [url]
- The New York Times published a nice table explaining how far the effects of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster have spread. For the radiation detected near British Columbia, "a person would have to drink 3 million glasses of water at one time to reach a problematic dose in the thyroid." [url]
- To find more stuff on research & research tools, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]
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Filed Under: charts, fukushima daiichi, infographics, radiation, sievert, xkcd
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um
I know I'm swimming against the "nukes are safe as milk" tide here, but I bet in 1950 you could have produced similar charts about why smoking is not really dangerous. But those were times when we weren't as scientifically sophisticated as we are today. Right?
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Re: um
Did it spike? As far as I read, about 18 million people were exposed to the radiation. The main health hazard was radioactive iodine, which led to 4000 extra thyroid cancer cases, causing about two dozen deaths out of the 50-odd attributable to Chernobyl.
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