this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2024
158 points (99.4% liked)
Asklemmy
43397 readers
1135 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Radioactive contamination: things don't transfer the property of radioactivity to everything they touch and/or irradiate. If that were the case, the entire ~~Earth~~ universe would have become radioactive gray goo long, long ago.
When radiation workers talk about "contamination," we mean radioactive compounds have physically transferred from one object onto/into another. For example, tools becoming contaminated with radioactive metal dust from equipment they touch, or clothing absorbing radioactive iodine gas from the air.
There is a form of radiation called neutron radiation that does make some formerly stable things (mainly metals) radioactive. This isn't something you're likely to encounter unless you're a specific type of radiation worker, however.
This is mainly gear-grindy to me because the reason we don't have gamma-sterilized produce in the US is completely unfounded fear that gamma irradiation "contaminates" everything it touches. So we could be having lovely fresh strawberries and peppers that last weeks longer than they usually do, but no, we can't because rAdIaTiOn ScArY ๐
Now that you mention it, it does make sense but I never t thought that you could sterilize food with radioactivity.
It is called cold pasteurization, seen some things labeled as such before.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_pasteurization
That will inturn lead to, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation