[ RadSafe ] Re:Reasonable risk?

[Glenn R. Marshall]

That's exactly the point!  

The fact that annual doses are maintained below the regulatory limit of
5 rem per year does not mean my employer is protected fro future
litigation, because the regulations also say we must maintain exposures
as low as reasonably achievable.  What does that mean?  Yeah, I know
what it means to me, and I know the regulatory definition.  But in a
court of law, it means whatever a sleazy lawyer can convince a judge and
jury to agree to.

If the law were to say the annual limit is 2 rem (3 rem, 0.5 rem -
whatever), fine - I can do that.  But the law also says I must adhere to
some gray area.  LNT says every photon is potentially fatal.  ALARA says
every time someone is exposed to a single photon, the employer is
potentially at risk of legal action unless he can prove that single
photon could not have "reasonably" been avoided.

Vast sums of money are spent chasing after a constantly moving target.
The public health benefit from all this, if there is one, is so small as
to be impossible to measure.  But the costs - additional payroll, taxes,
mental anguish, worry, withheld diagnostic or therapeutic procedures,
petroleum imports, etc. - are so high as to also be immeasurable.

So while ALARA looks good on paper, its practical application is far
from reasonable.  It, fed by misuse of LNT, has become the ace in the
hole for the Anti-Everything crowd.

Glenn 

-----Original Message-----
From: John Jacobus [mailto:crispy_bird at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Friday, April 21, 2006 9:39 AM
To: jjcohen at prodigy.net; Flanigan, Floyd; Michael Bohan;
radsafe at radlab.nl
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Re:Reasonable risk?

Jerry,
I certainly have no way of knowing if you actions are
reasonable.