At a Tokyo radiation hotspot, weirdness abounds

Officials were worried this week, when they discovered a radiation hotspot in Tokyo, kicking off readings as high as 3.35 microsieverts per hour. (For context, a dental x-ray is about 5 microsieverts. This wasn't a massive amount of radiation, but it was concerning. The AP reports that readings of that level have been found in the Fukushima evacuation zone.)

The good news: This has nothing to do with Fukushima. It turned out to be an extremely localized hotspot, and officials found the real source nearby.

The bad news: The real source turned out to be something the AP is describing as "mystery bottles" stored under someone's house. No. Really.

So, I guess the takeaway to this story should be something like: Japanese officials find source of radiation hotspot, and are no longer worried that it's being caused by Fukushima. Instead, they are now worried about why somebody in Tokyo is storing bottles of a radioactive substance under a house.

(Via Steve Silberman)

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

Maggie goes places and talks to people. Find out where she'll be speaking next.

MORE: Japan • mad science • News • radiation • Science • Weird

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http://mordicai.livejournal.com Mordicai

2011, where pretty often you can find the plot to a Shadowrun adventure on any given news day. MYSTERY RADIATION BOTTLES? WHAT THE HELL?
http://maggiekb.com/ Maggie Koerth-Baker

My favorite part is how the AP just kind of skims over this like, “Oh, problem solved then!”

No. No the problem is NOT solved. There’s some dude keeping “mystery bottles” of radioactive material under his house. Let’s talk about that.
Lobster

Oh come now Maggie, are you telling us you yourself don’t keep mystery bottles of radioactive material under your house? It’s a tradition that transcends nationality and religion! Indeed, is there anything that unites humanity more than our instinctual love of radioactive mystery bottle burying?
- ridestowe
  
  I have this in my bookcase
  http://boingboing.net/2007/11/30/uranium-ore-for-sale.html
jackbird

Just some old fiestaware. Filled with deutrium.
- http://maggiekb.com/ Maggie Koerth-Baker
  
  Buried under the floorboards. Like you do.
- Guest
  
  XD
http://twitter.com/james4765 Jim Nelson

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that they are old bottles of radium paint from glow in the dark products. Those things stay hot as hell for a long, long time, and they’re exactly the kind of thing that someone would stash away.

Not used anymore, since the phosphors burn out long before the radium cooks off, but there’s a lot of military and consumer products up until the 70s that used that nasty-assed stuff…
Jody Durkacs

Nuka Cola!
ChicagoD

I had no idea that people would get so excited about my home x-ray rig. Sheesh.
http://twitter.com/blindeschildpad Blinde Schildpad

So hey, maybe YOUR socks don’t need serious sterilization…
Dv Revolutionary

My first thought is fiesta ware or Vaseline glass though neither of those is really hot. For Halloween we break out the Vaseline glass and eat off it under a backlight. I wouldn’t do the same with fiesta ware.

These sound like old bottles of a now outlawed product, medicine or paint or something similar. That stuff is still all over the place. You have no idea how easy it is to buy radioactive medical waste at a scrapyard.
aynrandspenismighty

Oh, cool. They get Jolt Cola in Japan.
- ChicagoD
  
  Wait, Ayn Rand has a penis? What now?
  - http://maggiekb.com/ Maggie Koerth-Baker
    
    I’ll take Ayn Rand’s penis for $500, Alex.
    - http://www.paradea.org/notes/ Teirhan
      
      curiously enough, it’s growth was believed to be triggered by a childhood run-in with radioactive bottles in a basement.
      - ChicagoD
        
        Or radioactive bananas.
        
        I feel so dirty now.
justawriter

There were lots of radioactive patent medicines like RadioThor http://knol.google.com/k/-/-/1ljdtojlp2x7b/0361mr/radiothor1.jpg that could still be hot after all these years. If the home was built on an old dump it might not even be related to the home at all.
http://www.facebook.com/mack.reed Mack Reed

What? No one has yet invoked the specter of Aum Shinrikyo? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aum_Shinrikyo
http://www.paradea.org/notes/ Teirhan

This reads like the beginning of a horror movie.

how long until the mutated beasties swarm out of that basement to establish their dominion over earth?
- Phil Fot
  
  Not beasties, Radiation Zombies. Don’t forget how Night of the Living Dead began….
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_4NMQQ6G72V6ZJJLB7VKAX2EB5Q John

Isn’t it funny how, when the general population gets the means to measure radiation and begins an informal but independent survey, invisible hot spots suddenly appear?
- kc0bbq
  
  Make sure they never bring their instruments near the banana display at the grocery store. Standing around the bottles for an hour is about the same as eating about 43 bananas (@0. 078 microseiverts per).
  - rrh
    
    I’ve never eaten 43 bananas in an hour.
    - kc0bbq
      
      You don’t have to, but some people like a challenge.
      
      I think the Soviet students that were part of a student exchange I was involved with could have, though. $25 (in 1990 dollars) worth of bananas lasted all of ten minutes between a dozen of them. I imagine they got enough bananaradiation to glow in the dark for weeks.
Rich Keller

They’re keeping radioactive mystery bottles because they’re hoping that the deposit that they paid will go up when they return them to the store. Why get a radioactive mystery nickel when you can wait a half-life and get a radioctive mystery dime per bottle?
GregS

Well, where else should one store one’s mystery bottles of radioactivity? In the garage?
MadMolecule

I wish we could find out whether there’s been some sort of radioactive event in Japan’s past.
PathogenAntifreeze

Actually, an angsty teenage boy lives in the house, and he’s about to learn that his great-great-great-great grandfather fought demons from outerspace back in the day. Beautiful lady demons. And after defeating them, he stored their spirits in bottles , buried on the family land.
ssam

i wonder how long its been there, and how much people have been exposed to it. high quality data points for effects of low radiation doses are few and far between.
http://jakobdrud.livejournal.com/ Jakob Drud

The word ‘takeaway’ in Maggies article made me think of glow-in-the-dark pizzas.
howaboutthisdangit

Those bottle contain the very rare and potent blood of Godzilla.
http://twitter.com/dbrunker Dave Brunker

The article is a little sparse on the details. What kind of radiation are we talking about here? Alpha, beta, gamma, neutron? Even the strongest beta emitter will be rendered harmless by a few feet of air between you and it. If it’s thick enough, glass blocks beta radiation. I keep a radium paint clock in my basement inside a Pyrex baking dish and there’s no problem. Gamma/X-rays are different though. They pass through most everything like sunlight through a window.
The air doesn’t bother a gamma ray in the least.

kc0bbq: I have a very sensitive, digital, pancake Geiger counter and I’ve never been able to detect radiation from bananas. Potassium-chloride salt substitute will make it click a little faster though.
Shiawase

Radium 226 according to the yomiuri shinbun.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T111014005121.htm
- http://twitter.com/james4765 Jim Nelson
  
  Wow. Got it in one. To be fair, I’ve heard of this happening before in the US – a couple of rad freak friends of mine have come across old bottles of radium paint, and keep them in lead casks.
MonsterMan

Yep, this is definitely how the zombie apocalypse starts. Finally!
Antinous / Moderator

Meanwhile, in the UK:

Highly radioactive material found on a Fife beach is giving “cause for concern”, according to environmental watchdogs…Radium from wartime aircraft is thought to have been in landfill used when the foreshore was reclaimed.
jeligula

Please don’t use the word “takeaway”, Maggie. It is a buzz word for corporate douchebags, one thing that you are not.