Food Theory: Your Bananas Are RADIOACTIVE!

did you know that bananas are radioactive yeah I didn't either until recently turns out they're so radioactive that they regularly set off alarms at Customs and Border control checkpoints there's even a unit of measuring radiation named after them the bed or banana equivalent dose so today I think it's time that we had a very serious talk about the radiation that's happening in your kitchen cause uh not to worry you or anything but the most dangerous thing in there might just be your fruit bowl okay foreign [Music] welcome to food Theory the show that's going nuclear with knowledge friends today on food Theory it's Story Time a story that starts with U.S Customs and Border Patrol who for years had themselves a problem when shipping containers enter the country they're usually scanned using sensors designed to detect radiation to prevent people from sneaking nuclear material into the country no more radiation for us we have enough thank you very much and when they do detect high levels of radiation in a shipping container they launch a full-blown investigation to inspect the cargo and make sure that nothing funny is going on except very often something funny was going on most of the containers that tripped radiation alarms turned out to be full of bananas which wound up costing up millions of dollars in wasted investigations eventually they worked out a way to differentiate bananas from uranium but still why was this happening in the first place well here's the thing well the US has yet to find a banana bomb the bananas were in fact radioactive radioactive enough to trip the alarms legitimately and sure well U.S customs and border control isn't worried about those bananas entering the country should we be worried about those bananas entering our bodies how big of a concern is radiation in the kitchen could our fruit bowl be hazardous it turns out the answer is yes your fruit bowl May indeed be the most dangerous thing in your kitchen but to understand why and what level of threat this thing poses we have to start at the beginning first I think it's important to talk about what exactly it means for something to be radioactive pop culture is full of glowing green spiders and gamma-ray monsters but that's all fiction what does it really mean for something to be radioactive no this is actually something I touched on in a previous food theory about what's safe to eat after a nuclear fallout but radiation comes in two varieties first is non-ionizing radiation the low energy safe kind of radiation this includes everything from visible light to radio and Wi-Fi signals your microwave oven also part of that non-ionizing low energy radiation category on the flip side is ionizing radiation the higher energy stuff this is what people are worried about when they say that something is radioactive as you probably remember from science class all matter is made up of atoms and all atoms carry energy but some atoms carry around a bit too much energy this makes them unstable and prone to Decay when it does it releases that energy in the form of ionizing radiation the dangerous stuff and if you're exposed to that high energy burst it can actually mess up the atoms in your body it's all a question of how big of a dose you're getting ionizing radiation is harmful because it can actually damage the atoms in your body but given that each individual cell is composed of hundreds of trillions of atoms and each of those cells is just one of over 30 trillion cells that make up your whole body a few atoms get knocked around here and there isn't going to make that much of a difference it takes a lot of radiation to cause substantial cell damage for instance you ever have an x-ray well that's a form of ionizing radiation being shot at your body that's okay because the amount of ionizing radiation you're hit with when getting an x-ray isn't big enough to cause real harm to our bodies unless of course you're getting a lot of X-rays and by a lot I mean mean a lot a lot according to the American College of radiology the recommended safe level of diagnostic radiation exposure for a single lifetime is equivalent to about 10 000 chest x-rays or 20 000 dental X-rays now I don't care how bad your teeth are some tells me that you're not going to need that amount of dental work but even if you never get an x-ray in your life you're still being exposed to ionizing radiation all the time in incredibly small doses from radioactive minerals in your environment this is often described as background radiation and this isn't the sort of thing that you can escape by going off the grid and living in the woods this is just a natural thing because some of the minerals in the soil contain super low levels of naturally occurring radioactivity which brings us finally back to bananas bananas are packed with potassium a typical banana boasts a whopping 422 milligrams of potassium and a tiny fraction of all potassium atoms around one in 8 500 or the unstable radioactive isotope potassium 40. now one in every 8 500 atoms might see seem like a small number and it is but remember a typical banana has 6.5 times 10 to the 21st potassium atoms that is six and a half billion atoms times a trillion every second hundreds of potassium atoms in that banana are decaying producing ionizing radiation and that's why when you're dealing with shipping containers that hold over half a billion bananas you get enough radiation to trip sensors designed to detect nuclear material but okay that's half a billion bananas how much radiation are we really looking at from a single one not much to be honest it's roughly one percent of what you get from background radiation in a typical day now could you die from the radiation inside of a banana sure theoretically you could absorb a lethal dose of banana radiation if you ate like 50 million bananas that's not an exaggeration by the way a banana has won 10 millionth of a siever the standard unit of radiation and exposure levels around five siverts is lethal so if you do the math it's literally 50 million bananas 13 million pounds of food 5.9 million kilos considering that the average American it's around 2 000 pounds of food per year you could need 13 million pounds of bananas during an entire lifetime or heck even 50 lifetimes in other words eat up my friends radiation from your bananas is not something that you have to worry about but radiation from your countertop is years back granite countertops you know those things you paid extra to have installed yeah they became the subject of media attention when it was found that some of them were releasing radon in this case we're not only looking at the radon that's coming out of it but to a woman that's recently pregnant we're getting gamma radiation out of it that really has a direct impact on the fetus development gamma radiation is the type of ionizing radiation and the radon mentioned that clip is a radioactive gas from this part of the periodic table over here the noble gases and in a not very Noble move radon is a colorless odorless gas known to cause cancer in fact radon is the second most common cause of lung cancer right behind smoking why though would it be coming from countertops well remember what we just talked about Granite is his mind out of the ground around that as I mentioned has radium and radioactive materials sprinkled throughout so should we be all tearing out our granite countertops and refinishing our kitchens to avoid dying of lung cancer the answer is no at least probably no study is looking at radon exposure from granite countertops find that on average the concentrations aren't high enough to be dangerous however on average is no guarantee of safety the concentration of radioactivity and radon emissions tends to vary from slab to slab makes sense certain regions have higher levels of radioactivity than others so two seemingly identical slabs of granite could have vastly different levels of radioactivity in most cases you are going to be absolutely safe but you just might be unlucky and have gotten a slab with a particularly High concentration which is why lots of people have homes with radon detection systems and why radon checks tend to be an important part of the home buying process another source of radioactivity beyond the lookout for old Ceramics yeah those antiques he inherited from grandma might be giving you a third eye what was commonly referred to as Vaseline Glass custard glass jadeite glass Burmese glass ore since it was in Vogue during the 1930s depression glass are all varieties of what most accurately is described as uranium glass which surprise surprise is glass that was made with uranium and other things too obviously but like up to 25 uranium which is about a hundred percent more uranium than you want in your home I mean the uranium does make it look very cool it also lets it Glow under black lights but it helps also emitting dangerous cancer-causing radiation don't worry though not all fluorescent glassware relied on uranium for that coloring effect but some of it was also made with lead yay speaking of cookware you inherited from Grandma if your kitchen is stocked with stuff made prior to the 1970s some ceramic dishes were made using glazes that were colored using radioactive isotopes a lot of Manufacturers decided that the best way to get those brightly colored glazes was to use chemical cocktails that whoopsie happened to be radioactive cause let's really be honest with ourselves what would you rather have a nice brightly colored casserole dish or not cancer interestingly different colors of the classic dinnerware contain different concentrations of uranium oxide Studies have shown that red apparently is the worst and you know how you're not supposed to put acidic foods like tomato sauce in a cast iron skillet because the chemical acidity of the tomato is going to cause Trace Amounts of metal to leach into the sauce thereby giving it a metallic taste well something similar can happen if your uranium oxide coated Ceramics come into contact with acidic foods and let me tell you it's going to be a lot worse than just ruining the flavor of your spaghetti let's just say that any amount of uranium entering your body is the kind of thing that you're going to want to avoid so if you're gonna eat off of these things stay away from high acidity foods like spaghetti or blueberry cobbler or you know what better yet just trash them I don't think Grandma's gonna mind inheriting cancer plates is probably not a legacy worth passing on no matter how much sentimental value they might carry so like I said at the beginning of this episode your fruit bowl is probably the most dangerous thing in your kitchen not the bananas inside the bowl even though they are radioactive but the bowl itself oh yeah and also your calories top or you could always go the safest route and just not eat in your kitchen treat yourself to a radioactivity free lunch and hey while you're at it make sure you're getting even more free stuff out of that lunch by scanning your receipt using our sponsor for today's episode fetch fetch rewards is a super easy to use free app where you earn free rewards on literally anything you buy and I really do mean anything need to replace a bunch of old family Ceramics after watching today's episode me too that's not even a joke me too and regardless of whether you're going to Bed Bath and Beyond or Target for all that new cookware with fetch you can actually scan the receipt and get points that you can then redeem for hundreds of rewards like Amazon and Visa gift cards ordering stuff online totally cool fetch works with e-receipts too you're already buying stuff anyway you've already done the hard part of spending your money so why not take a few extra seconds to earn some of that money back using fetch scan the receipts so today's purchases can become tomorrow's rewards stocking up on groceries that's worth points treat yourself to a meal points trip to Home Depot more points online purchase for from Amazon you guessed it worth points that counts towards your next Amazon gift card and not only does fetch reward you for making purchases that you're already making but fetch has an offer right now for all of the viewers of this channel install the app and use the code food Theory to get 3 000 points when you scan your first receipt or you can just use the link down in the description again it's free it's fast it's easy and it's helping you earn back money that you're spending on purchases you're making anyway it is a win-win-win so again that's the link down in the description below tell them you're a loyal theorist with the code food Theory and get yourself a bonus 3 000 points when you scan your first receipt thanks again to fetch rewards for sponsoring this episode and thanks again to you for watching this episode now if you'll excuse me I need to um go remove some radioactive dishware from my cabinets and then go buy some non-radioactive dishware and then scan the receipts with fetch so yeah anyway remember it's all just a theory a food Theory bon appetit

Channel: The Food Theorists

Views: 1,997,694

Keywords: banana, radiation, radioactive, bananas, banana radiation, radiation bananas, microwave, microwaves, microwave radiation, can your microwave kill you, microwave dangerous, radioactive fruit, food theory, food theorists, matpat, film theory, game theory, banana song, potassium, science, radiation poisoning, is radiation dangerous, radioactive food, radioactive food test, granite countertops, granite, granite countertops dangerous

Id: -Xm5XnNBtuE

Length: 11min 35sec (695 seconds)

Published: Sat May 07 2022