Tokyo radiation levels 23 times normal: officials

These numbers are still very very small.<p>I'm sitting in Tokyo right now working away on my codebase. No need to get worked up over nothing and so far it is nothing. A lot of my friends (mostly foreigners in Tokyo) are getting on trains out to Kyoto or Osaka. I think that's fine; maybe it's better to be safe than sorry. Maybe it's the cynical New Yorker in me but I feel like I've seen too many of these scares before. Sometimes you just have to turn off the TV/Twitter/whatever and get back to work.<p>Who knows, maybe in a few hours or days I'll be heading out too. I think it's unlikely. Right now, I don't think there's a need .

Actually at that level chronic radiation a positive. Long term research on a large group of people in Taiwan living in somewhat radioactive buildings showed significantly lower cancer rates than the populace a whole.<p><a href="http://toshuo.com/2009/chronic-low-level-radiation-good-for-us-tawain-housing-accident-suggests-so/" rel="nofollow">http://toshuo.com/2009/chronic-low-level-radiation-good-for-...</a>

Even if it is 23 times normal it appears to be lower then living next to Ontario's nuclear plants with 1.1 microsieverts at Darlington, 2.8 microsieverts at Pickering. <a href="http://www.opg.com/safety/nsafe/nuclear/" rel="nofollow">http://www.opg.com/safety/nsafe/nuclear/</a> not an expert and the spelling of the unit seems wrong in the story.

At this rate, an average person would still be under 1/7th the ALI for a worker in a field of radiation, assuming rate was held for a year (limit is 50 mSv, or 50000 uSv

The irony is that if you were to fly out of Tokyo today, you'll be receiving a lot more radiation than what's present there because the radiation is much stronger in the stratosphere.

AndyIngram , thanks for the info, and i thought that my friends there in Japan are in danger of radiation. when i saw this news, i thought, WTH, 23 times. it turns out im just overreacting. let's just hope and pray(if you're religious) that Japan could recover quickly. crises like this makes a nation stronger.