For most of the adults, taking in a spoonful of liquor would not kill you, but drinking up 10 big bottles of tequila in a few mins will certainly causes an immediate and serious effect. What about enjoying three bottles of wine everyday? You might be ok now, but it may eventually cause a kidney cancer if you continue to do so for 40 years.
So given that we are exposed to 500mSv, 80nGy or whatever - our questions is: how dangerous would it be?
There are immediate effect and long term effect on this:
(immediate effect)
This is about the radiation ray directly coming out from the Plant. This chart from Hiroshima University gives you a rough guideline:
http://home.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/er/Resources/Image571.gif
* It says all the data is based on UNSCEAR's report in 2000
Unfortunately the description is written in Japanese, but it reads:
- Shuttling flight between Tokyo and NewYork: 0.1 mSv-1 mSv
- Stomach X-ray examination: 1mSv-10mSv
- CT scan: 10mSv
- Minimum correlation with cancer observed: 50mSv
Just note, usually the radiation level is shown as "amount of radiation / hour". You have to multiply it by the exposure time (in Hour, not seconds). Careful not to take micro Sv with mSv (milli Sv), as it often causes a panic, as well.
For example, if you are stand right in front of the Fukushima Plants, and assume that the radiation level was 5,000 micro Sv/h = 5 mSv/h, meaning if you are exposed right in front of the Plant for 1 hour, you receive about similar amount of radiation to that of X-ray stomach examination.
