Radioactive air filters, a health warning

Jazz is a lobyist for the european auto companys.You people that lap his $hit up need to get out more.

The Japanese hate the ruskies of course they are going to send all the contaminated cars to russia you muppet.LOL

But why I ask you should any facts get in the way of a good story!

LOL
'Go away troll'!

The average annual dose in the UK is 2.2mSv per year.
NZ 1.8mSv per year
Maebashi 104nSv/hr= 0.91mSv per year which is less that here!

Flight to UK return will give you about 160µSv, IE almost 10% of the natural radiation received from just being on this planet.

Everything you read on the internet - It's all true! You need to take it very, very seriously!

Jazz--please supply the direct information source for this. CLEARLY thisis a MAJOR issue and requires immediate action at the highest level.
MAF need to be given the direct contact details of the New Zealand scientist concerned so that they can take action.
Removal of all Jap air and pollen filters for export vehiclesin japan must happen right away.

Good wind-up jazz. Ha ha get real mate.

Just popped back in to check on the thread. I am pretty busy for the next few days but will dig up some more of the articles I was reading and post when I get the time.

Plenty on Google though if anyone wants to look.

In a nutshell though what you need to grasp is that car air filters work a bit like a vacuum cleaner bag or the interior of a computer (ever taken one a part to clean it!).

Basically because of the massive volumes of air being pulled through these filters you don't need to be operating a vehicle in a massively contaminated area to get quite a good collection of radioactive particles in the filter.

The Russians in the days of Chernobyl actually intentionally capitalised on this effect and would run a Geiger counter over a vehicles air filter or at its exhaust while it was running to see if there was much contamination in the area where the vehicle had been traveling.

I don't see whats so "tin foil hat" about being concerned about radiation in a small country that has recently had multiple full nuclear meltdowns. Not only that but they have other issues like the radioactive sewage sludge which was incinerated and then deposited itself as ash have added to the problem.

Remember all this has gone on while resources have been stretched to the limit over there just trying to get the country functioning again after a massive natural disaster.

Its no joke people. Many countries have turned shipments of cars and other goods around and sent them back to Japan including Russia, China and Egypt.

When the Russians are seen to reject shipments of vehicles it would only make sense that we should be paying close attention.

I also suggest people have a read up on just how radiation detection equipment works before mindlessly rubbishing claims that not all detection equipment can detect all kinds of radiation. Lives are at stake here and our biosecurity systems have been shown to let through all kinds of serious threats in recent history so I don't see why we should just automatically have complete blind faith in whats being done. I havn't even come accross anything up to date with any real detail about what is even being done to test these vehicles. We hear that there are "tests" done but what tests exactly are these! Is it just a Geiger counter hung up above the unloading door of the ship or what!

I sincerely doubt that all filters are being removed from every vehicle and tested before its granted entry. Please feel free to correct me if you have sound evidence to prove me wrong on this. (I would love to be proven wrong on this, safety trumps pride every time)

All I have been pointing out here is what I have read. I can see the logic and my primary concern for mechanics blowing out these filters with compressed air etc seems sound and logical in my mind.

Feel free to do your own research and add to the thread. but please at least attempt some research before posting mindless responses as some have.

It quite possibly is a serious issue, I can't tell you either way for sure. and that's kind of the point, it would be really nice to know what is actually being done.

I will go back and see if I can find some of the articles I read. In the meantime if you want to do something perhaps with your industry connections you could see if you can find out exactly what testing is being done on the vehicles entering the country!

My concern is simply that most of us here come into contact with these filters from time to time and some are actively cleaning them. It would be nice to know there is no cause for concern or if there is that its being fully addressed.

You raise a very good point. However Maibashi is one of the less affected areas (look at the map in the link) and those figures are current ones from what I assume is a sensor stuck to a pole somewhere.

What I am primarily concerned with is the dust. If you do some googling you will see there are plenty of areas with very contaminated soil etc. These particles are being concentrated in the cars pollen and intake filters and then potentially ingested directly into the body where they will lodge and remain for life.

Its one thing to say you can pull out a Geiger counter in the street and get an O.K reading. Its another thing to stick that instrument into contaminated soil in the same city and then understand that mechanics and the like are actively ingesting those same particles.

BTW, here is a calculator I used to get my head around the conversion of those numbers (might be useful to others, clearly you understand the conversion). I think it is very important to do your own math and sort the real from the imagined as you have pointed out.
http://www.convert-measurement-units.com/conversion-calculator.php!type=radiation-dose

I'd be much more concerned about radioactive fish entering the food chain than a cars air or cabin filter.

The immediate area around Fukushima Diachi was devasted as was the infrastructure surrounding it. Many cars were written off in the tsunami and of those that did survive the roads were too damaged to be driven on anyway. The rest of the vehicles were far enough away from the radiation epicentre for it not to be a massive issue.

It's not as if the cars that the Japanese are exporting now have been left idling on top of reactor 4 for the past year or so.

Most of the radiation is getting pumped into the pacific and not ending up in the cabin filter of a Toyota Echo.

You miss the point.
1. You don't need a lot of contamination where the car is being driven because the particles are concentrated on the filter and then directly ingested.

2. Japan is a lot more contaminated than people seem to realise. Someone had the bright idea to incinerate a lot of the badly contaminated sewage waste which then blew around and deposited itself over a wide area.

Take a look at page 6.
The sample from Tokyo looks bad enough for me to be concerned. Would you want to blow that filter out with compressed air in your workshop!

http://thayer.dartmouth.edu/~cushman/courses/engs43/MarcoKaltofen.pdf

Also, note the slide that explains it more to the point than I have. "Airborne levels have dropped, soil levels remain high" Its that dust that gets whipped up and into cars air filters that I am worried about.

If that were the case then people actually living in Japan would be being exposed to massive amounts of radiation as their lungs would effectively be the cabin/air filter that this thread is about.

If that were the case then we would be seeing some very very sick Japanese people, and this simply isn't the case at present is it!

It's all going into the ocean.

That's the whole point really!

Yes people in Japan will be breathing this stuff in too, and no you won't be seeing the affects yet. This is the sort of cumulative long term nastyness that causes cancer, you won't really see it for a few years yet.

Cars in a way are worse than lungs in that as you drive along the wheels of the car in front are actively throwing the dust up off the ground which is then forcibly sucked into the air intake of your vehicle. Then its all collected on the filter until some mechanic blows it out with their air gun or it slowly gets dislodged and breathed in by the occupants.

Its not a case of "all going in to the sea" the sea is another disaster going on at the same time. Its not a case of one or the other or a competition about which is worse.

Just to reiterate, we are not talking about massive radiation that will give you radiation sickness in a matter of hours. We are talking about individual radioactive particles that are breathed in and lodge themselves in your body for life.

Quick, the sky is falling

Do not see a problem. All the filters were washed by the tsumani.

Jazz our knowledge on long term effects of radioactivity has come a long way. Remember as a kid how you were told that Nagasaki would be a desert for hundreds of years! Well go look at modern pictures of that city.

I'm not saying there isn't some truth to the issues you've described, I'm just saying 'state your source'. I know you're not a particle physicist, and neither am I, so need the sources to be objective about it.

Otherwise here's another example of what you are directly responsible for doing: remember a few years back when the Prius first appeared! Soon after a study was released that 'proved' that over it's lifetime a Hummer had a smaller environmental footprint than a Prius. This study went viral and pretty soon the minds of people who repeat such stories without checking the facts were made up.

That study has largely been debunked now, but it's too late, the damage is done.I regularly hear reference to it, and how the new eco cars are not all they're cracked up to be and good ol' american iron will be the saviour of us all if only we went back to the old ways. The hilarious irony here is it's studies like that one that are the reason you have such a hard time selling the virtues of VW's new emissions technology now. Priceless!

SO if you want to endanger NZ's import car industry based on something you read on the internet, go ahead. I'd rather have facts.

AGAIN--I;m seeing lots and lots of typed words. and again--where are the facts so you can get them directly to MAF! I have the contact number so YOU can contact them directly with your concerns

MAF is bio security, you want NRL (not football) http://www.nrl.moh.govt.nz/

Im hearing ya-but I'm thinking maf need to know so they can contact the likes of nrl.

Here's a radiation level map of Japan.

http://jciv.iidj.net/map/

You will notice that the entire country is a nice healthy green colour, everywhere except for a 20km x 50km area immediately around the Fukushima power plant.

.Maybe that's where all the used cars go, before they come to New Zealand!

Theres a higher chance of China liberating Tibet than Jazz posting up facts.

Jazz is above such ordinary requests, his opinion is fact