[ RadSafe ] uranium smoke is a teratogen

[Steven Dapra]

May 21

         Amen to that, Mike.

         James, you can't even keep track of what you're fulminating 
about.  You are bemoaning Depleted Uranium, not lead.  Get into the game.

Steven Dapra


At 09:05 AM 5/21/08 -0700, Brennan, Mike  (DOH) wrote:
>
>
> > SD's comments:
> >
> > .... According to the second of Olsen's articles (April 15, 2008),
> > "The shipment is safe, Hyslop said, because the concentration of
> > uranium in the sand is so low  about 10 parts per trillion. That
> > concentration  about
> > 0.00000000001 percent  is about five to 10 times higher than the
> > concentration of uranium found in concrete or wall board, he said."
>
>Chad Hyslop said this nine days later:  "In one preliminary sample, the
>concentration of lead in the sand was nearly four times higher than the
>EPA standard that triggers a hazardous-material designation.... The
>sample contained 19 milligrams of lead per liter...."
>--
>http://www.tdn.com/articles/2008/04/25/area_news/doc48115f17af5cd7591204
>35.txt
>
>Hi, Ben/James.
>
>Let's talk about credibility for a moment.  Do you want to be credible
>with this group?  I assume you do.  If you do, you need to decide to
>stop doing things like the exchange above.  When faced with strong
>evidence that DU concentrations in this shipment was very, very low; too
>low to be a health risk in any credible exposure scenario, you could
>have responded, "You are right; there really isn't a problem, and it is
>an over-reaction and waste of money to ship that sand half way around
>the world for disposal."  Instead, you said (to paraphrase), "OH YEAH!?!
>Well, what about the lead?  SO THERE!"  If you had thought about it for
>a moment you would have realized that given the handling this sand was
>already going to receive the lead would present no problem at all
>(indeed, that was stated quite clearly in the article you linked to),
>and that you bringing up the lead was not going to strengthen your
>original position about DU.
>
>This tendency when faced with evidence that your original position is in
>error to shift without acknowledging you were wrong in the first place
>does not give the reader the impression that you are interested in
>arriving at the truth, but only at convincing people that you are right,
>whether or not you are.  While this is only one of the things you do
>that harm your credibility, it is a pretty easy one to fix.  Let's start
>with a simple exercise:
>
>When was the last time you were wrong about some aspect of DU; in
>particular, when you originally thought that something supported the
>position that DU is a serious health problem, but it turned out that it
>didn't? (NOTE: I am NOT asking you to concede that DU is not a serious
>health problem, only that you, in your zealousness, may have
>misinterpreted something as supporting your position when it didn't.)
>Did you acknowledge your error to the person who demonstrated it?  If
>so, how?  If not, why?
>
>Your ability to admit the possibility that you are wrong will improve
>the chances that knowledgeable people might accept the possibility that
>you are right.