What is the most radioactive food?

Brazil nuts are the most radioactive everyday food. However, large quantities of Brazil nuts, lima beans, and bananas all can set off radiation detectors when they pass through shipping. The radiation dose from eating one banana is calculated at 107 Sievert or 0.1 microSieverts.
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What is the most radioactive fruit?

The most well known examples of naturally-occurring radionuclides in foods are bananas and Brazil nuts. Bananas have naturally high-levels of potassium and a small fraction of all potassium is radioactive. Each banana can emit .
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What is the most radioactive vegetable?

Carrots. Carrots give you a pico-Curie or two of radiation per kilogram from radon-226 and about 3,400 pCi/kilogram from potassium-40.
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What is the most radioactive everyday item?

Brazil nuts are probably the most radioactive food you can eat. They provide 5,600 pCi/kg (picocuries per kilogram) of potassium-40 and a whopping 1,000-7,000 pCi/kg of radium-226. Although the radium is not retained by the body for very long, the nuts are approximately 1,000 times more radioactive than other foods.
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What kind of food contains radiation?

The FDA has approved a variety of foods for irradiation in the United States including:
  • Beef and Pork.
  • Crustaceans (e.g., lobster, shrimp, and crab)
  • Fresh Fruits and Vegetables.
  • Lettuce and Spinach.
  • Poultry.
  • Seeds for Sprouting (e.g., for alfalfa sprouts)
  • Shell Eggs.
  • Shellfish - Molluscan.
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How radioactive are bananas and other radioactive foods?



Is broccoli radioactive?

Broccoli is known to have a low level of natural radiation. It isn't dangerously radioactive, and no one is going to die from the imported legume, unless the salad chef has something up his sleeve.
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Are avocados radioactive?

The researchers used a portable gamma radiation meter to measure the external gamma radiation emitted in a North Carolina home. The radiation was measured in microgray per hour (μGy/hr). Avocados, for example, gave off 0.16 μGy/hr of gamma radiation – slightly less than the 0.17 μGy/hr emitted by a banana.
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What produces the most radiation?

By far the largest source of natural radiation exposure comes from varying amounts of uranium and thorium in the soil around the world.
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Is red meat radioactive?

Other foods are radioactive as well. Carrots, white potatoes, red meat, and lima beans all contain roughly the same amount of potassium per kilogram -- and thus radiation -- as bananas. However, all of these foods pale in comparison to the mighty Brazil nut.
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What foods contain uranium?

Microgram amounts of uranium are also present in beef, poultry, eggs, fish, shellfish, and milk. Root vegetables, such as beets and potatoes, tend to have more uranium than other foods.
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Are sweet potatoes radioactive?

Mr Pipat said the sweet potatoes were found to contain Iodine-131, also known as radioiodine. Radioiodine has a half-life decay of about eight days. Although the contamination amount was still under the harmful level set by the World Health Organisation at 100 Bq/kg, the potatoes would be destroyed, he said.
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Does eating a banana cause radiation?

Some potassium is always taken in via the diet, and some is always excreted, meaning that there is no buildup of radioactive potassium. So, while bananas are indeed radioactive, the dose of radioactivity they deliver does not pose a risk.
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How many bananas do you need to eat to get radiation poisoning?

Yes, bananas are radioactive, but so are you. Yes, you will certainly die from radiation poisoning if you are able to eat 10,000,000 bananas at once. You may also witness chronic symptoms if you eat 274 bananas a day for seven years.
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Why are Brazil nuts so radioactive?

It is not true, as is sometimes thought, that the high concentration of radium in Brazil nuts is due to elevated levels of the uranium and/or thorium series in the soil in which the tree grows. The accumulation of the radium (and barium) is due to the very extensive root system of the tree.
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How many bananas does it take to make a nuclear bomb?

Comparing this to the 3520 picocuries per kg for a banana gives us the mass of bananas required to equal the radioactivity of one Little Boy: So approximately 38788 metric tons of banana to equal the radioactivity of one Little Boy.
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Does alcohol have radiation?

Natural alcohol gets its carbon from plants; the plants got the carbon from atmospheric carbon dioxide. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is radioactive because of the continued bombardment of cosmic rays – particles coming from space that collide with nitrogen molecules and turn it into C-14, radiocarbon.
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What everyday things are radioactive?

Is Anything We Use in Everyday Life Radioactive?*
  • Smoke Detectors. Most residential smoke detectors contain a low-activity americium-241 source. ...
  • Watches and Clocks. ...
  • Ceramics. ...
  • Glass. ...
  • Fertilizer. ...
  • Food. ...
  • Gas Lantern Mantles. ...
  • Antique Radioactive Curative Claims.
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Is there radiation in wine?

The amount of radiation present in all the wine tested by their lab is too small to harm a person's health. Radiation detection has been used for decades as a way to verify the age, or vintage, of a wine. Wines from 1952 to the 1970s, for example, have much higher radiation levels due to above ground nuclear testing.
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What are the 3 main sources of radiation?

Natural background radiation comes from the following three sources:
  • Cosmic Radiation.
  • Terrestrial Radiation.
  • Internal Radiation.
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Does the microwave give off radiation?

The non-ionizing radiation from microwaves is only produced when the microwave is on and cooking. All the microwaves are made inside your oven and absorbed by the food. Microwaves are built so that electromagnetic radiation doesn't escape the oven.
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Do bananas give off gamma rays?

Avocados emit 0.16 micro-Grays per hour of gamma radiation (a Gray is a measurement of absorbed radiation dose), while bananas emit 0.17 micro-Grays per hour.
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Do rocks give off radiation?

Essentially all rocks exhibit a low-level of natural radioactivity that is due to the decay of radionuclides that are typically present in minute quantities (e.g., parts per million).
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Can you look at the elephant's foot?

Although it is extremely dangerous and due to security, it is impossible to see the Elephant's foot with your own eyes, it is possible to get inside the Chernobyl power plant.
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