From an article entitled "Hong Kong, Cornwall Radiation Beats Tokyo Even After Japan Nuclear Crisis" originally posted in Bloomberg on 1st April, some fascinating information about global radioactivity figures arose.
This excerpt below from The Business Insider condenses the figures nicely.
With the crisis in Fukushima ongoing, fears over the radiation threat continue to dominate headlines.
But the radiation situation in Japan's financial heart, Tokyo, is better than Hong Kong, and hardly higher than New York or London, according to Bloomberg.
According to the most recent data, here's how the cities match up:
- UK annual average - 0.251 microsieverts/hour
- Hong Kong - 0.14 microsieverts/hour
- Tokyo - 0.109 microsieverts/hour
- New York - 0.095 microsieverts/hour
- London - 0.08 microsieverts
So why were so many people fleeing Tokyo in the wake of the disaster? Simple, the headline number increased by 30 times, according to Bloomberg, so to a person not understanding how small the numbers are to start, it seems quite big.
That doesn't mean the situation around the reactor site, however, is any better or less alarming.
