Name: What Happens If You Eat Uranium?
Uploaded: 2020-04-04T07:50:54.000Z
Duration: 3 min 35 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

by conflicting information on  what we should and shouldn't be eating.

But if there's one thing that we can all agree should definitely not be a part of our diets,

In the movies, ingesting radioactive materials like uranium

results in all sorts of crazy hijinx, like obtaining superpowers!

and here's what would happen if you ate uranium.

Uranium is a naturally radioactive material

that was one of the main elements used to  make the nuclear bombs of WWII.

But you don't have to be a mad scientist to be exposed to it.

The Environmental Protection Agency says that the average person

eats between 0.07 to 1.1 micrograms of uranium per day.

And how much can we eat before it starts to do damage?

"I wash and inspect every piece of food I put into my body,

and I've never noticed any glowing green materials!"

For one thing, contrary to what pop culture tells you,

uranium and most other radioactive materials do not actually glow!

And on top of that, the uranium that we eat isn't being secretly

sprinkled on top of our food by some covert organization,

so you can remove your tinfoil hats, for now.

Instead, the uranium that we eat is coming from within our food,

Uranium occurs naturally in soil, rock, and water;

and it can be released into the air through wind and water erosion,

In the air, uranium exists as dust that falls onto plants and land,

Once on land the uranium seeps into the soil and sticks to plant roots,

its primary means of getting into our diets.

But don't worry, the amount of uranium we ingest on a daily basis

Luckily for us, almost 99 percent of the uranium that enters our body through food

also makes a quick exit through our feces.

And 70 percent of the remaining uranium that doesn't go through the back door

just leaves a bit later through urination.

A tiny amount will stay within your bones for  a few months, or even years after eating it,

but won't have the same toxic effects  you'd experience if you inhaled it.

Just because we all survive ingesting it every day,

doesn't mean we should be eating big chunks of it,

and starting the "uranium challenge" online!

Eating large doses of uranium would be very dangerous;

you'd immediately start to experience kidney damage,

and anywhere past 50 milligrams could  cause complete kidney failure and even death.

If you did happen to survive those meals,  you still wouldn't be in the clear,

can lead to increased chances of cancer and changes in brain chemistry.

So yeah, if someone plops a big chunk of uranium on your plate,

you're probably best to pass, and tell them you've had your share for the day.

And, who knows?  Maybe there are a whole bunch of other strange materials

secretly entering our bodies on a daily basis,

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What Happens If You Eat Uranium?

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