Surely eating a banana has more exposure than just holding it
this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2025
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Depends on what kind of radiation. Alpha radiation? You can hold the banana forever, but you better not eat it. Gamma radiation? Kinda fucked either way.
So if I'm ever offered a gamma-radiating banana I might as well eat it? Got it and thx
Think Incredible Hulk crossed with King Kong.
Green Gorilla?
Aw hell ya. Im gonna be so frickin strong after this that I'll finally be able to finish Edward Scissorhands without even crying or covering my eyes
Google says the potassium in bananas emit beta and gamma radiation. No idea what that means but there ya go
Beta is an electron, gamma is a photon (and alpha is a helium nucleus)
Almost certainly. But I'm not going to eat thousands of bananas in a day.
Relevant links:
Based on the chart, even if you got a full 0.1uSv dose from each of the 10,000 bananas, it would be 1mSv, which doesn't seem fatal.
I'm aware of BeD, which is the inspiration for the post.
But I'm not talking about radiation poisoning, because we'd know if spending a day in a banana plantation was fatal.
I'm wondering about increased risk of cancer form long term banana plantation exposure.
A couple things we can gather from these sources:
- Being near a banana is likely a much lower dosage. The BED article notes that eating a lot of bananas doesn't give linear dosages, as the excess potassium is discarded. And if you're not absorbing much radiation from it being literally inside you, I can't imagine you're getting much from having it further away (even at high quantities).
- According to the xkcd chart, we receive a yearly dosage of 390uSv from the potassium naturally in our bodies, and living in a stone, brick, or concrete building for a year results in only 70uSv. I'm not sure what the equivalent exposure would be for injecting those materials, but the picture I'm getting at this point is that external exposure to bananas would likely be less fatal than the sheer mass of what would be required to give a significant dose.
I used to work in chemical exposure insurance and to be honest, it would be very difficult to tell because of the increased risk of cancer from chemicals used in the growing process as it is. Most of the countries that have banana plantations can't really defend their citizens against huge fruit companies, so if something has been declared illegal in Hawaii, they just use it in their other plantations, and of course the US is dismantling the EPA and NLRB, so soon they might not even be illegal there anymore. Organic fruit is not significantly different, because there are lots of things that are allowed for them that are still carcinogenic to humans in large concentrations.
I’m really sorry to be a downer, but sometimes the world sucks, and pineapple and banana companies suck even more.
Bananas are not radioactive enough to meaningfully increase cancer risk in any quantity.
Intensity of radiation falls according to the inverse square law. Because bananas take up space it's not possible to have enough bananas close enough to you to irradiate you.
Not to mention the fact that there's a growing body of evidence that elevated radiation exposure can, to a point, decrease cancer risk.
That makes sense, its like overdosing on pot.
The last bit about radiation decreasing cancer risk in low (but still elevated) doses seems pretty suspect though. Where did you find that research?
It wasn't just that video where I saw it, but it's the easiest thing to quickly find and he has a fairly robust sources list in the description.
Low level DNA damage activates a more robust DNA damage repair. But it is a fine line between protection and tumor triggering.
I once hauled a load of bananas as a trucker then developed superpowers (i.e. was later told I'm super boring)
That sure musta been something. I can only imagine.
People saying that bananas are slightly radioactive was never about highlighting that bananas are particularly radioactive, it's just a coomon example to show that everything is radioactive.
You probably recieve more radiation by being outside for 1 minute than standing next to a million bananas for a month.
Not that it even matters, most of the radiation will be stopped by the air before ever reaching you, and then most of the minute amount that reached you will be stopped by your skin.
Unless you're literally standing next to the demon core, you basically have nothing to worry about.
That's true for radiation poisoning.
I'm asking about increased risk of cancer.
Lots of those things in our natural environment that you mention do increase our risk of cancer, with long-term exposure
"Cancer risk" can be a lot of things. It's not like cancer is just one disease - it's a whole family of diseases. The mechanisms by which something increases cancer risk are many and frequently poorly understood.
Fortunately, the mechanism of action of ionizing radiation and the cancer risks associated with it are well understood, and so we know that bananas are not dangerous.*
(* well, they're not dangerous because they are radioactive. It could turn out that they're dangerous for some other reason.)
(* well, they're not dangerous because they are radioactive. It could turn out that they're dangerous for some other reason.)
Once my mate Paul was crushed by a palette of bananas. The crazy thing is, it put a load of pressure on his bowels and he shit all over the place. There was just shit and bananas everywhere. But Paul never got cancer, so I guess he was pretty lucky.
what is holding a banana for an hour
Pretty weird, tbh.
What if I stroke the banana slightly, every once in a while? That would make it less weird, right?
What if I use it to caress my face? What about then?
Are you actually periodically pedantic or occasionally pedantic? Is there a pattern? When's the next time you're gonna be pedantic again?
Let me run a linear regression and get back to you
A miserable little pile of secrets
I wonder if NoStupidQuestions might be a better place for this....
I guess a better way to phrase it would have been
How many daily bananaHours do you need long-term to increase your risk of cancer by 5%?
Edit: just added this to the post because commenting on my own post is stupid
Weird I just saw a YouTube video on this like a week ago. Basically you would need to eat an amount that would never be possible by a lot for anything to possibly happen. The other point is we have more radiation than a banana to begin with and are hit by more radiation in 1 day than probably a thousand would even create. Our bodies are able to remove some radiation as well. There are even some parts of the world were people are exposed to higher than normal amounts of radiation and we found that over time the rate of cancer is less than the global average so I would highly doubt being around bananas would cause any risk for cancer.