RE: ALARA

["Karam, Andrew" <Andrew_Karam@URMC.Rochester.edu>]

ALARA is good.  ALAP is not.  

Slowing down on the highway gives us more time to react to the unexpected
and reduces the force of an impact.  However, slowing down to 5 miles per
hour raises the risk of dying from boredom, starvation, or old age on a
cross-country trip.

It was reported (Keeney, NEJM, July 21, 1994) that every $5-12 million (in
1990 dollars) spent collectively costs one life because that money is not
available for other risk-reduction options.  Looking at the risk, even under
LNT, versus cost makes it obvious that reducing dose to the lowest level
possible with existing technology will cost far more lives than it will
save.  If there is a threshold, then reducing dose to any level below that
threshold costs money and lives with absolutely no concomitant risk
reduction.

Andy

Andrew Karam, CHP              (716) 275-1473 (voice)
Radiation Safety Officer          (716) 275-3781 (office)
University of Rochester           (716) 256-0365 (fax)
601 Elmwood Ave. Box HPH   Rochester, NY  14642

Andrew_Karam@URMC.Rochester.edu
http://Intranet.urmc.rochester.edu/RadiationSafety

Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship which
grinds you stuff of any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you
get out depends on what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the
world will not extract wheat-flour from peascods, so pages of formulae
will not get a definite result out of loose data.  (T.H. Huxley, 1869)
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