Apparently fed up with having to deal with E coli problems on produce of late, our own federal government is going to take extreme measures to try to protect people in America. But the technique they’re going to employ has been a secret for a number of years in the eradication of potential bacteria that could be on meat and produce arriving across our borders. Consider perhaps irradiation to be the equivalent to using radiation treatment to eradicate tumors in cancer patients. Only, in that process, it’s the primary (or maybe secondary) way to get rid of cancer. For some people, the thought is still out there that certain amounts of radiation could cause cancer if you’re one who eats a lot of produce or meat.

It’s understandable why our government has kept it quiet that processors have been using radiation to kill potentially dangerous bacteria on our meat supplies going back a number of years. There likely would have been a backlash from people complaining about buying a steak and thinking about gulping down radiation with it during dinner. The word radiation just isn’t a pretty word as you might have guessed based on how many people have died from it and from the never-forgotten sight of the mushroom cloud from Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Now that our nation’s food processors have revealed they use irradiation more often than they’ve admitted to and plan to expand it to removing potentially fatal bacteria from lettuce, spinach and similar produce, it’s going to be interesting to see the reaction from the American people if some even know. It’s amazing how the government can reveal things they do to the media and many not even know from either not paying attention by choice or being too busy to get the news. That subconscious fear of radiation, however, may have some merit, despite supposed experts in irradiation saying that there’s nothing to fear in the use of it on our food.

We have to remember that radiation is really being used everywhere now, especially if you’re a traveler or have health problems that involve a lot of tests…not necessarily relational to one another. Those backscatter x-ray machines you’ll be soon dealing with in airports will be shooting a good dose of radiation through your body every time you have to be looked at naked to see if you have a bomb shoved into your belly button. X-ray machines are probably one of the most dangerous mechanisms to getting low-dose radiation through one’s person, and people who need a lot of x-rays for health purposes might just get a little too much into their body.

I know from experience when having single pneumonia once eight years ago. After about seven x-rays every week or so to keep tabs on how it was progressing, I had about enough and refused any more–especially due to the cost. Getting that much radiation from the x-rays over a period of two weeks probably didn’t do me any good, but it’s common for many people.

And let’s not forget computer monitors give off a little radiation that could add up to quite a lot if you work long hours in front of your monitor. It doesn’t even have to be said for cell phones when the increase in brain tumors seems to indicate that radiation emanating from them is more than what it should be.
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Even those are just a start when it comes to the use of radiation in our environment and technology. Whether people will put that into a larger picture or not in the case of having to deal with irradiation in their food regularly now will remain to be seen. There really isn’t much that can be done about it other than taking the basic advice of not eating or using things too much that may utilize radiation in some capacity. For vegans, it might prove to be a bit daunting now buying lettuce or spinach and eating it daily with the knowledge that one serving may have small amounts of radiation, yet eating it every day may be a different story.

Beyond that, you’re going to see some who think the government doesn’t really understand how dangerous radiation could be no matter how small the initial dose of irradiation there always is on our produce. It hasn’t even been studied on cell phones yet despite the continual proof it’s causing brain cancer in heavy users. Once it’s hard to deny, a general consensus may finally develop that says that different options and technologies should be employed in eliminating bacteria from food and through the devices that get a little too close to our bodies on sometimes an hourly basis…