[ RadSafe ] The coming cancer [ABSURDLY OVERESTIMATED ] cost from Fukushma according to Gundersen
Howard Long
howard.long at comcast.net
Fri Dec 23 17:12:56 CST 2011
Stewart, have you been assimilated by the BORG (Bureaucrats Of Rapacious Government)?!
"The EPA
estimates that for EACH large coal plant in the US, one can calculate that
there will be 100 deaths per year from COPD, lung cancer, heart disease and
more causes, based on exposure to fine particulates, acid gases, and air
toxics [mercury & others. -"
"I think Fukushima had a generating capacity of 4,400 MWe, so over the time
that thd Fukushima plant complex operatede it would have avoided about 13,000
calculated excess deaths had the generation it supplied been supplied by
coal. "
Do you believe political "science"?!
Please observe Climategate, read State of Fear (Crichton) and Type A Behavior and Your Heart (Friedman and Rosenman). Then observe original data on COPD, lung cancer, heart disease, particulates, acid gases, mercury etc. - with dosage considered, as with radiation.
I find NO credible study showing any disease more likely from proximity to a coal plant!
My counter found just 15 mR/hr 100 feet from reactors and storage yard
( vs 25 mR/hr from the granite sinks in the Phoenix hotel).
However, LLivermoreNL area Communities Against A Radioacrive Environment
(the very name betraying their ignorance) continues agitation for
intentional over-regulation to kill the nuclear industry (Rockwell)
Cold kills, not coal!
Stop knocking coal!
Elect TEA stimulators of the economy!
Howard Long MD MPH Epidemiology
howard.long at comcast.net
On Dec 23, 2011, at 12:25 PM, Stewart Farber <SAFarber at optonline.net> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> Happy Holidays to All, and a New Year filled with Peace, Love, The Media
> Becoming Scientifically Literate, and Charlatans Not Distorting the Truth
> for Their Hidden Agendas: [Please Santa, is this too much to ask?]
>
>
> The claims by Gundersen of millions of deaths from Fukushima are patently
> absurd vs. a first-order consideration. If they were within 3 or 4 orders
> of magnitude of being true, more people would be dying from cancer each year
> than from all deaths. And careful studies of the effect of radiation on
> human health have established that "Ubiquitous Background" radiation
> exposure can be responsible for no more than about 2% of all cancer
> mortality [ which is about 16% of all deaths], or about 0.3% of total cancer
> deaths
>
> We have no need to debate the LNT regarding Fukushima, or how many cancer
> deaths, if any, the TMI accident might have caused. We simply need to
> consider the facts of how much radiation exposure is delivered each year to
> a population like the US as an example, and what overall health effects have
> been seen, at a maximum vs. the population radiation exposure of a TMI
> accident or Fukushima accident.
>
> The US National Council on Radiation Protection in a recent major Report
> [No. 160, "Ionizing Radiation Exposure of the Population of the US" -2009 ]
> observed that Americans were exposed to more than 7 times as much ionizing
> radiation from medical procedures in 2006 as was the case in the early
> 1980s, doubling overall rad exposure in the past 25 years. In 2006,
> Collective Radiation Dose [Person Sv = A Summation of all radiation
> exposure] to the entire US Population per year was estimated by the NCRP:
> Annual
> Exposure Category Person Sv % of Total
> -Ubiquitous Background 933,000 50
> -Medical 899,000 48
> -Consumer-misc. 37,400 2
> -Industrial 1,000 < 0.1
> -Nuclear Power 150 < 0.01
>
> TOTAL 1,870,000
>
> So Medical radiation exposure is 6,000 times higher per year, and total
> population exposure is 12,000 times higher per year than that that from 100
> nuclear plants generating 20% of US electricity.
>
> Many anti-nukes like a Caldicott, or the so-called "Physicians for Social
> Responsibility" make erroneous claims and try to divert attentions from the
> reality of medical exposure as a relevant factor. These parties argue that
> medical radiation exposure in CT scans and Nuclear Medicine exams has
> absolute benefits to patients, outweighing any possible cancer risk.
> Nonetheless, there is growing recognition of a problem with "Unnecessary"
> Medical Radiation exposure. The US FDA , Center for Radiological Health has
> studied medical radiation exposure for decades. About one-third of total
> Medical Radiation is what the FDA terms "Unnecessary Medical Radiation
> Exposure" [*1] . This results from improper calibration and device
> settings, repeats due to inadequate training, and other factors which expose
> patients to radiation without clinical need or benefit. FDA estimates of
> "Unnecessary Medical Rad Exposure" equates to 300,000 Person Sv , or 2,000
> times more external and internal rad exposure to the US public each year
> than than the 150 Person Sv from 100 nuclear power plants.
>
> The US population receives 150 person Sv of "Unnecessary Medical Radiation"
> every 4 hours. A minor effort to avoid 150 person-Sv in medical uses, would
> reduce US population exposure by an amount equal to the fixation of
> anti-nuclear scaremongers and charlatans [like - .... and .... and --- --
> the list is growing since it is such an easy way for a person with no facts
> to get their ego stroked] on shutting down 100 US units, and 300 more
> international nuclear power plants. These scaremongers manipulate
> statistics in trying to get society to stop what has been documented as the
> safest form of power generation per unit energy produced, while asking the
> world to squander roughly a thousand billion dollars invested in nuclear
> electric generating plants operating today.
>
> The Three Mile nuclear plant Accident [a so-called "Disaster" in which no
> one was killed because of a plant design that minimized rad releases] in
> 1979 resulted in a total population exposure of about 20 person Sv.
>
> So, it would require about 15,000 TMI scale nuclear power plant "disasters"
> per year at current Medical exposure levels to equal the FDA's estimated
> annual "Unnecessary Radiation Exposure" from Medical uses of CT and
> Nuclear Medicine.
>
> The Fukushima accident will after thorough evaluation and calculation will
> have delivered much more radiation exposure than TMI. But even if it causes
> 100 or 1000 times more than TMI, the total population exposure might be 2000
> person-Sv [if 100 times more] or 20,000 person-Sv [if 1,000 times more]
> than TMI. Importantly, we still have a handle on the MAXIMUM number of
> cancers possible per person-Sv based on the LNT which shows the claims of
> anti-nuke activists to be ludicrous.
>
> Based on LNT, and what is likely to be an overestimate of the cancer deaths
> predicted, it is estimated that one can expect at a very MAXIMUM about 1
> cancer death per 20 person-Sv delivered to a population from whatever cause
> per year, expressed over the lifetime of the exposed population. So if
> Fukushima results in 20,000 person-Sv of population rad exposure [ or 1,000
> times more than TMI] it can be expected that there would be an absolute
> maximum of 1,000 cancer deaths expressed over the lifetime of the exposed
> Japanese population. Gundersons unsupportable claims of 4,000,000 deaths
> are at least 4,000 times higher than what would be expected at a very
> maximum.
>
> What also must be recognized in a discussion of health costs, are the Public
> Health benefits of operating a nuclear plant vs. an alternative. The EPA
> estimates that for EACH large coal plant in the US, one can calculate that
> there will be 100 deaths per year from COPD, lung cancer, heart disease and
> more causes, based on exposure to fine particulates, acid gases, and air
> toxics [mercury & others]. So per single 1,000 MWe nuclear plant operating
> in place of a 1,000 MWe coal plant over a 30 year period since the nuke
> plant began operation as with Fukushima, a single 1,000 MWe nuclear plant
> will have avoided about 100 environmental deaths x 30 year = 3,000 avoided
> deaths.
>
> As a sidebar, since the TMI accident 30 years ago which caused 20 person-Sv
> and an estimated 1 cancer death, the 100 nuclear plants in the US will have
> avoided about [3,000 deaths/plant over 30 years] x 100 plants = 300,000
> deaths vs. coal fired power generation. The US nuclear generating capacity
> from 100 nuclear plants avoided 300,000 deaths vs. a predicted one death
> from TMI. The hand-waving by scaremongers like the long list of charlatans
> and con-men we have seen reveling in the attention of fawning innumerate
> media since Fukushima occurred does not change these likely level of risks.
>
> I think Fukushima had a generating capacity of 4,400 MWe, so over the time
> that thd Fukushima plant complex operated it would have avoided about 13,000
> calculated excess deaths had the generation it supplied been supplied by
> coal.
>
> So Fukushima's operation for 30 years will have avoided a rough estimate of
> about 13 times more deaths than will theoretically result from Fukushima
> having caused 20,000 person-Sv of population radiation exposure.
>
> The bottom line is that inflated and unsupported claims of 4,000,000 cancer
> deaths by Gunderson, or Caldicot, or Busby, or Bertell from Fukushima are
> disproved by the actual cancer deaths resulting from Background Radiation
> and Medical Exposure. 4,000,000 deaths from Fukushima would equate to about
> 400 million cancer deaths in the US PER YEAR, or more than the entire US
> population dying each year from cancer from annual background and medical
> rad exposure. Obviously Gundersen's claims fail a first-order analysis of
> the risks involved
>
> Stewart Farber, MS Public Health
> 203-441-8433
>
> [*1] "Initiative to Reduce Unnecessary Radiation Exposure from Medical
> Imaging"- Center for Devices and Radiological Health, US Food and Drub
> Administration, Feb. 2010
>
> ==================
> -----Original Message-----
> From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu
> [mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Brennan, Mike
> (DOH)
> Sent: Friday, December 23, 2011 12:24 PM
> To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) MailingList
> Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] The coming cancer cost from Fukushma ionising
> radiationaccording to Gundersen
>
> Hi, John.
>
> You are correct that we cannot KNOW that "zero" cancers resulted from
> Three Mile Island. We can, however, look at the releases
> (overwhelmingly thermally hot noble gasses, that went up and dispersed),
> and conclude there is very little source term to cause cancer. We can
> look at the number of well done studies (as opposed to the poorly
> designed, often lacking in evidence studies) that have not found a
> statistically significant increase in the cancer rate among the
> population that might conceivably been exposed, let alone those for whom
> there is a good reason to believe were exposed. It is possible that
> somewhere there are people who were exposed to some number of atoms of
> radioactive material from TMI, and that one of those atoms decayed at
> just the right time and in just the right place to induce a mutation in
> a cell, causing it be reproduce in an uncontrolled manner. It is also
> possible that that person's anti-cancer systems failed to detect and
> destroy that particular cancer before it manifested to the level it
> could be detected my medical science. However, to date we can't pick
> that out of the background rate of cancer.
>
> I would also submit that the evidence is good that high levels of stress
> have been demonstrated to have a number of negative effects on an
> individual's wellbeing, including their ability to fight cancer. I
> would submit that as bad at TMI was engineering-wise, many, many people
> were made to feel more stressed that the actual hazard warranted by
> anti-nuke "experts" saying things they knew to be false. This is
> especially true in the subsequent years, after the release had stopped
> and the released material dispersed and decayed away, but the anti-nuke
> "experts" strove to keep stress high for their own political reasons.
> While it is at least as difficult to measure stress induced cancer in a
> human population as it is to measure radiation induced cancer from small
> exposures, I submit that we cannot KNOW that "zero" cancers were cause
> by the irresponsible utterances of the anti-nuke community in general,
> and their most noted spokespersons in particular. Since we cannot know
> that either that accident or the anti-nuke response caused any cancers,
> we can consider those two sources equal.
>
> Thus, it is not incorrect to say it can be demonstrated that Arnie
> Gundersen personally has caused as many cancers as TMI did.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu
> [mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of John R Johnson
> Sent: Friday, December 23, 2011 4:51 AM
> To: RADSAFE
> Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] The coming cancer cost from Fukushma ionising
> radiationaccording to Gundersen
>
> Christina
>
> There is no way that we could know that "there were zero cancers as a
> result
> of Three Mile Island". Has there been "no cancers" in that region of the
>
> world since it occured?
>
> John
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Roger Helbig
> Sent: Friday, December 23, 2011 3:18 AM
> To: RADSAFE
> Subject: [ RadSafe ] The coming cancer cost from Fukushma ionising
> radiationaccording to Gundersen
>
> Gundersen really has a knack for outdoing Busby or maybe just channels
> him - he certainly peddles hype and hysteria with considerable aplomb
> - amazing since there were zero cancers as a result of Three Mile
> Island - is that not correct?
>
> The coming cancer cost from Fukushma ionising radiation
>
> by Christina MacPherson ( christinamacpherson at gmail.com )
>
> Nuclear Expert: 1,000,000 cancers from Fukushima in Japan over next 20
> years ENE News - First thyroid, then lung, organ, brain, leukemia
> (VIDEO) Title: Fukushima - Total Cost
> http://enenews.com/nuclear-expert-forecasts-1000000-cancers-from-fukushi
> ma-in-japan-first-thyroid-then-lung-organ-brain-leukemia-vide0
> Dec 21, 2011
>
> Description: Arnie Gundersen of Fairwinds Associates (a leading
> nuclear expert) and Warren Pollock (http://www.wepollock.com )
> redefine the Fukushima nuclear incidents (meltdowns and explosions) in
> terms of human and total cost. [...]
>
> I think the 20 year cost from Fukushima will be about one million
> cancers
>
> Based on Three Mile Island studies
> About a 20% increase in lung cancer 3-5 years after TMI
> And that was small compared to Fukushima
> And in a much lower population density
> First thyroid cancer
> Then lung cancer
> Then organ cancer, leukemia, brain cancer, things like that
>
> Christina MacPherson | December 23, 2011 at 8:09 am | Categories:
> Resources -audiovicual | URL: http://wp.me/phgse-5mE
>
> Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser:
> http://nuclear-news.net/2011/12/23/the-coming-cancer-cost-from-fukushma-
> ionising-radiation/
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