[ RadSafe ] Chernobyl

[Brad Keck]

All,

In the wee hours ( US time ) of the morning, CNN broadcast an interview with Jim Smith of the University of Portsmouth - an author of this study.   

While the interviewers expressed a little incredulity at the result, the caption banner running under the interview said something to the effect that radiation levels posed no risk to Chernobyl wildlife.  ( I apologize for the imprecise quote, but I had no business being up at that hour :}    )  In all, it was a fair presentation of the results and the author was allowed to speak directly - good to see.   

Congratulations to Prof. Smith and other authors for penetrating the TV media with real science!

Bradly D. Keck



> On Oct 6, 2015, at 1:26 PM, Doss, Mohan <Mohan.Doss at fccc.edu> wrote:
> 
> Dear All,
>     A long-term study of wildlife in Chernobyl http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982215009884  published recently states (referring to the 2013 study by Møller and Mousseau):
> "However, a previous study of mammals using track counts [3] reported a negative relationship between radiation levels and mammal density. The discrepancy with our data is likely because this previous study [3] covered only 16.1 km of transects examined just once. Our data are derived from transects with a total length that is 20 times larger and repeated in two (21 routes) or three (14 routes) years."
>    This is a nice debunking of the results and claims of [3], Møller and Mousseau (2013), Assessing effects of radiation on abundance of mammals and predator-prey interactions in Chernobyl using tracks in the snow. Ecol. Indic. 26, 112-116. 
>    The deer in the highest dose category had dose rates of ~50 microGy per hour in 2009 (Table S3, Supplemental Data), and so would have experienced quite high total doses over the years. The deer population for the highest dose routes does not seem to have decreased (Figure S1, Supplemental Data) in comparison to lower dose routes. 
>    With best regards,
>                                     Mohan
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: radsafe-bounces at agni.phys.iit.edu [mailto:radsafe-bounces at agni.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Joseph Preisig
> Sent: Tuesday, October 06, 2015 12:11 PM
> To: radsafe
> Subject: [ RadSafe ] Chernobyl
> 
> Radsafe,
> 
> See news item on Google News
> 
> Wildlife doing well around Chernobyl...
> 
> Joe Preisig
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