AW: [ RadSafe ] Reporting about Chernobyl

[Rainer.Facius at dlr.de]

Bjorn:

Apparently this 'article' is a particularly repugnant piece of disinformation. 

However, also in Germany not only penny press 'sensational newspapers' seize the chance of the 20th Chernobyl anniversary to make some additional dollars with their best (or second best) selling merchandise, Angst. Among the more reputable great German newspapers to my knowledge only the weekly journal Die Zeit tries to balance the standard Greenpeace and other halfwits' rubbish - which of course they too have to spread - with some genuine scientific information such as the Chernobyl Forum findings as an antidote. 

Attempting to rectify the disinformation disseminated by most of the other articles these days - as I too often do in writing to the editors of the other newspapers - is bound to remain an exercise in futility until the scientific community unites in declaring the laymen's version of the LNT concept - "any small amount of radiation kills" - what it actually is (and always was): 

a convenient tool, indispensable to radiation protection practitioners to formulate and execute radiation protection standards but as a postulate an outdated tool yielding absurd results at variance with much of the radiobiological results of the last two decades if applied to estimate health risks below 100 to 200 mSv acute and perhaps 500 mSv chronic low LET exposure to ionizing radiation.

This is bound to happen - the question only is, when and how much our societies will have to pay for the sequelae arising from this absurdity?

Best regards, Rainer


________________________________

Von: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl im Auftrag von Bjorn Cedervall
Gesendet: Do 20.04.2006 14:47
An: radsafe at radlab.nl
Betreff: [ RadSafe ] Reporting about Chernobyl



I am well aware of that only a small fraction of you can read Swedish. The
following link may however call for a comment or two:
http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/nyheter/story/0,2789,812216,00.html

This is the leading sensational newspaper in Sweden.

By starting at:
http://www.aftonbladet.se/
and scrolling down you will find a first picture and then a few more.
Next headline reads: "Julia 8, shall die from cancer".

There is so much of bias and strange desinformation in this article that it
is hard to know where to begin. It says that the sperms have become so
damaged ("lazy"/slow) - (understatement: because of the radiation) - that
1/4 of all men can't produce children.
New to me is the "Chernobyl chromosome" which according to the article now
is an established concept. "The cancer frequency is now three times
larger..." (very unclear statement with regard to time, geography and so
on). No doses mentioned...

A few Swedish words:
barn = child/children
människa = person/man
människor = persons/people
sjukhus = hospital

My personal action only,

Bjorn Cedervall    bcradsafers at hotmail.com


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