Ramsar, land of radiation hardened super beings

The Ramsar area in Mazandaran, Iran has one of the highest levels of natural background radiation in the world. It comes from the radioactive elements present in the hot springs that Ramsar is famous for. Folks living near the hot springs get the equivalent of one chest X ray every two hours throughout their lifetime. One would think that this would create a high rate of cancer among the natives; surprisingly it doesn’t seem to. In fact, when radiation researcher P. Andrew Karam took blood cells from native Ramsaris and exposed them to radiation, he found that the Ramsar cells are unusually resistant to radiation damage. The typical Ramsar kid playing in the streets seems to have a level of immunity to radiation that allows him to tolerate at least five times the annual occupational limit for a US nuclear energy worker!

I ran into this bit of Iraniana while trying to make sense of the Japan nuclear disaster radiation levels. Just what does it mean that the level of radiation reported in the immediate vicinity of the stricken reactor in the Fukushima plant was 1000 mSv per hour? Well, Ramsaris get a maximum of 260 mSv (milli sieverts) per year from their hot spring environment. So we will create a new unit, which we will call “the ramsar,” equivalent to this 260 mSv.  In our new homemade unit, a Fukushima nuclear worker in the vicinity of the reactor would get about 4 ramsars every hour (note that Ramsaris get one ramsar every year). . After the Fukushima disaster, the Japanese raised their maximum allowable nuclear worker exposure from about half a ramsar to just below one ramsar to allow the emergency work to legally continue.  If a worker uses up his one ramsar quota, he can’t legally work the rest of the year. Even with the raised quota, this means that a nuclear emergency worker at the Fukushima plant can only work for only a quarter of an hour near the reactor before he is done for the year and has to be replaced by a fresh worker.

In cases where human life is at stake (perhaps there’s someone is trapped in the reactor building) The US Environmental Protection Agency allows a volunteer rescuer a total of only about 3 ramsars for the duration of the rescue operation. US workers are allowed 2 ramsars if the situation is not immediately life threatening but still an emergency. By the way, some Chernobyl emergency workers supposedly received about 770 ramsars during every hour of their effort. According to the IAEA 28 emergency workers died of acute radiation sickness within 3 months of the accident.

Let’s hope we won’t have to worry about how many ramsars we would measure in Bushehr if things go wrong with that reactor.

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