Do We Have to Fear the Radiation Leak from the Power Plant in Japan?

I remember back a few-years-ago when the threat of terrorism was first made known and right after 9-11, everybody was going out and buying gas masks and plastic wrap to put over their windows in case of a biological or chemical attack. I think that it's a good idea to have some emergency food and water in the house, but plastic wrap? Like that's going to protect you from deadly gas getting into your house.

I also remember the radiation drills that we used to have in school. The lower level of the school was the fallout shelter. We all thought that with the cold war, the world was going to end at any time when the Russians sent us a nuclear bomb.

Remember the drill in school that told you to get under your desk and cover your head in case of a nuclear attack? Yeah, like that would work. My plans if the bomb went off was to grab a kiss from the cute girl that sat behind me, and then evaporate. Turns out that the Russians were more afraid of us than we were of them.

Now there is a radioactive cloud floating over California and everybody is running around buying potassium iodide and Geiger counters. Authorities say that you probably get more radiation from an X-ray, but what do they know?

So far monitoring stations both here in the United States and ones in Canada have failed to detect anything. Nothing can keep us from panicking if we want to. I'm more worried about something going wrong with the nuclear power plants here in the United States than the ones in Japan.

According to Medical News Today:

"Although Los Angeles is over 5,400 miles from Japan and the risk of any life-threatening radiation spreading over across the Pacific is negligible, a considerable number of Californians are worried about radiation poisoning."

The reason that people take potassium iodide after being exposed to radiation is that it saturates the thyroid gland and prevents it from absorbing anything else, thus preventing cancer. And, of course, everybody knows what Geiger counters are used for.

What happens if you are exposed to more radiation than what is safe? REM, or roentgen equivalent in man, is how radiation exposure is measured. A short exposure of about 50 rem probably won't harm you, but it can be detected in the blood. A dose between 50 and 200 may cause illness, but death is unlikely. Between 200 and 1,000 and you get seriously ill. The closer you get to 1,000, the more likely the dose will be fatal.

Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/219632.php