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Radiation Exposure A Daily Event

CHICAGO (CBS) -- Radiation exposure has been all over the news lately, in the wake of the massive earthquake in Japan, which damaged several nuclear power plants.

We're exposed to radiation every day, right here in Chicago, so CBS 2's Vince Gerasole went out Wednesday to check out just how much. He used a Geiger counter and tested all kinds of everyday items all around us.

He learned that what our science teachers taught us is true: radiation occurs naturally all around us, from the sun, from the earth, even in the foods we eat.

It's only at the mega-intense levels like those in Japan when there is cause for concern.

In the Physics labs of the Illinois Institute of Technology, registering radiation on everyday items with a Geiger counter is nothing new.

A simple piece of desert rock registers some 4,500 counts per second. More surprising is the 1,200 count from a wind up alarm clock and the 22 count from a smoke detector.

Even the Depression glass Gerasole's wife collects registered 77 counts per second, indicating a radioactive presence.

IIT Physics Dept. Professor Jeff Terry said, "These are things that, in general, we don't think twice about, because the level of radiation is low enough."

After a quick lesson in the proper use of a Geiger counter, Gerasole set out to measure the radiation in our daily lives.

A tree gave off a reading of nine counts per second.

"It's measuring the natural background radiation that we're all exposed to normally," IIT grad student Dan Olive said.

But some nearby cigarette butts gave off a much different reading: 85.

"One of the reasons is we grow a lot of our tobacco in areas where there is high uranium concentrations," Terry said.

For some perspective, you'd have to sit on that smoke detector for about one hundred days to equal the radiation in a typical CAT scan. An acute dose of radiation occurs at 100 times the CAT scan rate.

"People tend to be afraid of things they don't understand, but it's improtant to realize everything is radioactive to some level," Terry said.

We also saw that radiation occurs in the foods we eat.

For example, the Geiger counter sounded off near a salt substitute that contains potassium chloride. Apparently, one in every 10,000 of the atoms in it is radioactive.

But we need potassium in our diets to prevent an electrolyte imbalance that can damage the heart.

In comparison, the radiation levels inside the damaged nuclear power plants in Japan are likely hundreds of thousands, if not millions of times higher than in the salt substitute.

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