An Allergy, explained.

This morning Woody BLEW MY MIND.   He told me something about the Banana Equivalent Dose, a concept that places in scale the dangers of being exposed to radiation. I liken this to using your hand to measure the size of something or maybe the price of a McDonald's Happy Meal to measure the local economy or maybe using the size of Texas to measure the Great Pacific Garbage Patch . (Twice the size of, by the way).  So when someone throws a number at you, in terms of radiation, you know whether to laugh at it, run like hell or just curl up into a ball and await your motherfucking fate.  One banana - 130 Bq/kg, or roughly 19.2 Bq (520 pCi) per 150 g banana - You can laugh at this...eat it for breakfast with impunity. You can say something like this: "HAHAHAHAH 19.2. HAHAHAHAH. So what. Pass the god damned coffee."

But then, let's say you are a former Russian spy, and you've just sat down to eat some sushi in the West End of London and in the past you've made some serious enemies, the kind of enemies that run countries, the kind of countries that jail people who look at them funny and give football teams to those they hold in favor.  Let's just say you also order some green tea with your sushi and someone has put traces of Polonium-210 in the cup, or about 20 micrograms. (Micrograms are REALLY TINY grams.) Right there, you've got about 2 Gbq (to sound science-y say "two giga bequerel"). This is equal to about 104,166,666.67 bananas.  Brazil, a fucking huge banana producing country would work from  January 1 to about March18th to produce this many bananas. 

Somewhat related to all this, here is a picture of me in Brasilia. The capital of Brazil.  But I digress....

In other words, if you are exposed to 2Gbq of radiation, you should just curl up into a ball and and whimper quietly to yourself.  Or do as Andrew Litvinenko did and shout down Russian dictators from his death bed.  Either way, its curtains for you.

And either way, that is a fuckload of bananas. Perhaps more than you'd be able to carry into a sushi bar without being noticed, no matter how stealth you were.  So, in summation, good call evil agent of dark forces unknown. 

One last thing.  A Brazil Nut has a higher concentration of radiation than an average banana.  In fact, it's the most naturally radioactive food with activity levels that can exceed 444 Bq/kg.  If I ate 1 kg of Brazil nuts I would die.

Offensive Nut

Not due to radioactivity.

I did want you to think it though....that is what is commonly referred to as a "misdirect".  No, I would die because I AM ALLERGIC.

A thank you is in order.  Today's post would not have been possible without Woody and his Beautiful Mind style mathematical stylings.  For his trouble, I am going to post a photo of him surfing in Costa Rica. A very important country in the banana exporting business.  Coincidence?  I think not.

Woody Strassner, El Banana Assassin