>>The Department of Health and Human Services have affirmed that ingested cobalt 60 can cause cancer.<<

Which might be a problem if you popped along to the food irradiation factory and ate their Co-60.

The Co-60 is used to irradiate the food with gamma rays. It isn't added to the food: that would be dumb. Gamma rays are high energy electromagnetic waves. When you switch off the light do photons stick about and contaminate whatever they were illuminating? It's the same with gamma rays: remove them from the food or the food from them and they're gone. There is no lingering radiation contaminating the food and the only changes have been the sterilization and some minor chemical changes. Unless you think the gamma rays transmute the organic molecules into Co-60 - which would come as news to a lot of nuclear physicists - I really don't see what the known dangers of Co-60 ingestion have to do with the supposed risks of food irradiation.

It isn't sufficient to simply assume that food irradiation is bad because it contains the word 'radiation'. You need to explain how and why these foods are dangerous - instead you've told us that eating industrial radioisotopes is a bad idea. Top marks for stating the obvious, fail for making a convincing argument.

Cheers,

Tony

Shouldn't vegetarians be more concerned that the foods they eat are irradiated by the sun?

There is only one thing to blame, that's the unrelenting demand for cheaper goods.

What else do we expect when wages are makimg many business suffer, yet, they (wages) are not enough to live on.

Dear worldwatcher,

From my understanding it is almost impossible to
measure specific long term effects of any one
chemical of low toxicity in human studies.

I guess as long as the food is labeled a person can
choose whether to buy it or not (or turn to "organic"
produce).

My understanding was that irradiation was entirely safe.
It killed food bacteria thus enhancing food safety and
extending the shelf life.

I suppose it all depends how much we trust the government
standards on what's safe and what isn't. However, I believe
that food irradiation is here to stay.

Any one who watched the medical show RPA last night would have seen that something once irradiated is perfectly safe to have near your body, or even in it.

A standard procedure was mentioned, where a part of a womans pelvis is to be cut out, irradiated with much higher rate than life can survive to kill a cancer, then put back to rebuild her pelvis cancer free.

Life, in this case the cancer is eradicated by irradiation, this has no long lasting effect in the thing treated.

Hasbeen,

If this was a recent procedure, how are they able to state there will be no long term effect?
As we now know, it can be many years before exposure to asbestos, or over exposure to the sun can manifest.

Give me a week, and I'll check on that. Partner's cancer is back again, and I'll ask the surgeon about that procedure you mentioned when we see him next week.