My friend George actually reads the Federal Register every day, his job as
chemist makes it necessary, I am glad that he does, its dry reading but we need
to be vigilant of what is becoming law out there...Thanks to George...:
Guess what? You just got a last-minute Xmas present from the
FDA. And in this case, I really MEAN Xmas as in X RAY. Because believe
it or not, they just quietly approved AS A FOOD ADDITIVE the use of
high-energy neutron bombardment of containers 'that might contain food' as a
surveilance method to detect contraband in trucks and sea containers and, one
presumes,
conceivably our suitcases and so forth. This is the big kahuna of food
irradiating: unlike irradiating food directly with Xrays or gamma rays, which
arguably does some damage to food molecules but doesn't actually leave them
radioactive, neutron bombardment is such a powerful method of irradiating that
it not only induces gamma radiation IN the food but it
actually DOES leave it radioactive. Well, OK, just a little. The exposure
will be pretty brief, they promise, typically just a few seconds, which if you
twist my arm I will readily admit will produce an infinitesimal amount of
radiation only, with a fairly short half-life, that in actual
fact will (probably) do little damage. Though they admit that in 'iffy' cases
they might have to blast something with their energy particle beam (beloved by
'Buck Rogers' fans everywhere) for 'as much as 5 minutes'. (Or perhaps a
little more, if the inspector forgets to turn his unit OFF before leaving for
his coffee break.....) They present a bunch of data to show that this practice
is harmless, and actually the numbers don't look all that alarming to me,
mostly because this isn't something that food will be getting routine exposure
to--this is a method of spot-checking only, one would hope!--so this
individual contribution to that proverbial bushel of dirt you have to eat
before you die doesn't seem all that significant to me. But it's just
one more thing you are being exposed to that nature probably didn't actually
PLAN for you to eat...and in any case I wanted to let you know what your tax
dollars have been up to lately. Here's the reference, from the Federal
Register:
http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/06jun20041800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2004/04-27868.htm
