AW: AW: [ RadSafe ] Chernobyl's Reduced Impact

[Rainer.Facius at dlr.de]

Maury:

 

Thank you for providing another example of the deeply routed misconceptions regarding (ionizing) radiation.

 

"But radiation? sure everybody knows about that -- the invisible rays that killed masses 

of people from the atom bombs in Japan ...."

 

Recently I had to rebut a manuscript promoted by trade unions of air crew talking about the well known effects of radiation as exemplified in the "Strahlenhölle" (radiation hell) of Hiroshima. The fact is that as 'little' as 5% and certainly less than 15% of the about 200000 fatalities fell victim to the genuine radiobiological early effects of acute high radiation doses, i.e., essentially the hematopoietic syndrome. The vast majority died from the classic effects of conventional bombs, i.e., thermodynamic shock waves (pressure and heat blast), fire, trauma from debris of tumbling buildings. In addition to the acute effects, the most recent numbers concerning the late effects from the 'low' dose ATB exposures (as taken from a recent news paper article) are: In a survivor cohort of about 87000 a total of 10127 cancer deaths have been observed since 1950 up to now. About 479 (fourhundredseventynine) of these 10127 deaths are in excess of the expected natural cancer mortality and can be ascribed with some reason to the cancerogenic action of acute irradiation - above say 200 mSv. 

 

So much for the MASSES that everybody KNOWS to have been killed by radiation.

 

If you compare these numbers with the - in Germany alone - about 140000 deaths among perhaps 4000000 traffic casualties since 1950 you cannot help but wonder and/or weep.

 

Kind regards, Rainer


________________________________

Von: Maury Siskel [mailto:maurysis at ev1.net]
Gesendet: Mi 14.09.2005 23:31
An: Facius, Rainer
Cc: crispy_bird at yahoo.com; michael.g.stabin at Vanderbilt.Edu; radsafe at radlab.nl
Betreff: Re: AW: [ RadSafe ] Chernobyl's Reduced Impact



Please forgive the anecdotal intrusion, <...> 

 But radiation?
sure everybody knows about that -- the invisible rays that killed masses
of people from the atom bombs in Japan and that might kill us by a
terrorist dirty bomb 

<...>