Probably the most prolific killer as far as radioactive vegetation is Polonium 210 in tobacco. [0]<p>I always thought it made a good case for organic cigarettes, which otherwise sounds really silly on the face of it. My logic being that organic tobacco should not use phosphate fertilizer which is likely the source.<p>[0] <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19960838/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19960838/</a><p><a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19186689/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19186689/</a>
What's with "organic" in the title? The link doesn't mention anything about organic food, unless it's meant to be pedantic that food is organic matter.
Wow, I never thought of Brazil nuts being that radioactive. I guess because they pick up more metals from the soil? They're very high in selenium. I've definitely picked up the radioactivity of bananas on my Geiger counter, but now I think I gotta run out and get a bag of Brazil nuts.
“the annual average dose per person from all sources is about 620 mrem”<p>That’s the mrem of 62 chest x-rays. From food and drink annually.<p>Should we be alarmed? Or just more comfortable with lots of diagnostic x-rays?<p>EDIT: Thank you. I missed a link in the article that clarifies: “From food and water (40 mrem)”
Wouldn't a better measure be radioactivity by the origin geography of food sourced? I can't imagine they sampled carrots from around the world and determined there was no stat sig difference. Growing carrots in Bikini Atoll is probably worse than carrots in Amazonian jungle.<p>"All organic matter (both plant and animal) contains some small amount of radiation from radioactive potassium-40 (40K), radium-226 (226Ra), and other isotopes"<p>Would this factoid be true pre-1945 Oppenheimer / Los Almost test? Because the world powers have carried out close to ~2056 nuclear detonations since 1945.
<i>Killer bananas from outer space with their radioactive potassium!</i><p>Brazil nuts are bad for multiple reasons, but I'm not worried that they're <i>radioactive.</i><p>It's good to do the basic research to survey, but too often research is picked up by the media and distorted.
Let's just get the obligatory, relevant XKCDs out of the way:<p>Hot Banana: <a href="https://what-if.xkcd.com/158/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://what-if.xkcd.com/158/</a><p>Dose chart: <a href="https://xkcd.com/radiation/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://xkcd.com/radiation/</a><p>I wonder if the NRC chart takes into account the "cold pasteurizing" and other methods of deliberately irradiating food.