> The radiation exposure from consuming a banana is approximately 1% of the average daily exposure to radiation, which is 100 banana equivalent doses (BED).
If your scale starts at 100, maybe it’s not such a great educational example.
If the Average Daily Exposure (ADE) is 100 BED, the number inflates in a way that make the values seem unnecessarily high.
It’s implicitly a kind of “appeal to nature” argument, but already eating 100 bananas is completely unrealistic, and that’s just background radiation.
The article goes on to say:
> The maximum permitted radiation leakage for a nuclear power plant is equivalent to 2,500 BED (250 μSv) per year
I really don’t think this is helpful, because first of all nobody eats 2,500 bananas and it doesn’t say anything about safety, and secondly we now know that this is the same thing as 25 ADE, which both sounds less and gives a better relative comparison to how small the amount is.