Actually at that level chronic radiation a positive. Long term research on a large group of people in Taiwan living in somewhat radioactive buildings showed significantly lower cancer rates than the populace a whole.
http://toshuo.com/2009/chronic-low-level-radiation-good-for-...
Even if it is 23 times normal it appears to be lower then living next to Ontario's nuclear plants with 1.1 microsieverts at Darlington, 2.8 microsieverts at Pickering. http://www.opg.com/safety/nsafe/nuclear/ not an expert and the spelling of the unit seems wrong in the story.
At this rate, an average person would still be under 1/7th the ALI for a worker in a field of radiation, assuming rate was held for a year (limit is 50 mSv, or 50000 uSv
The irony is that if you were to fly out of Tokyo today, you'll be receiving a lot more radiation than what's present there because the radiation is much stronger in the stratosphere.
AndyIngram , thanks for the info, and i thought that my friends there in Japan are in danger of radiation. when i saw this news, i thought, WTH, 23 times. it turns out im just overreacting. let's just hope and pray(if you're religious) that Japan could recover quickly. crises like this makes a nation stronger.
These numbers are still very very small.
I'm sitting in Tokyo right now working away on my codebase. No need to get worked up over nothing and so far it is nothing. A lot of my friends (mostly foreigners in Tokyo) are getting on trains out to Kyoto or Osaka. I think that's fine; maybe it's better to be safe than sorry. Maybe it's the cynical New Yorker in me but I feel like I've seen too many of these scares before. Sometimes you just have to turn off the TV/Twitter/whatever and get back to work.
Who knows, maybe in a few hours or days I'll be heading out too. I think it's unlikely. Right now, I don't think there's a need .