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RE: FACTS ABOUT TENNESSEE ILLNESSES



Mr. Slavin

I read your letter with great interest.  As a Health Physics professional, I
too am concerned about the health and welfare of the people in the area
around Tennessee.  I think most Health Physicist care a great deal about
these types of issues.  It is one of the reasons we selected and remain in
this field.

I do agree with your statement regarding the rapid and vigorously negative
comments that may arise when "radiation" health effects are suggested.  We,
as professionals, should ensure that we maintain an open mind with respect
to developments in the science.  I believe that our failure to maintain, and
communicate, that perspective is one of the reasons that we are not well
received by the press and the public.

On the other hand, the press and the public, are all too willing to assume
every debilitating illness is due to radiation.  I am quite willing to
believe that residents in the Oak Ridge area are suffering from a number of
health issues.  Your comment regarding the "witches brew" is quite apt.
There are a number of confounding environmental factors present in the area.
To assign the end result to "radiation exposure" is misleading and
inappropriate.  Environmental restoration, and preferably preservation,
should  be a priority.  But focusing on miniscule and inconsequential levels
of ANY environmental contaminant is not appropriate.  Every dollar that is
needlessly spent chasing these low levels of contaminants is a dollar not
spent finding and fixing the real areas of concern or investing in proven
life saving resources such as ambulances, drug rehabilitation programs,
schools and job education programs.

There are parties on both sides of these types of issues that do little to
help resolve the actual problems.  Those of us in the HP profession that are
too quick on the attack are just as bad as the non-professional HPs that
rely too readily on poorly performed studies to support their particular
point of view.  Both positions merely serve to more firmly entrench the
other party.


...  mine and mine alone...

Ron LaVera
Lavera.r@nypa.gov

		-----Original Message-----
		From:	EASlavin@aol.com [mailto:EASlavin@aol.com]
		Sent:	Thursday, April 06, 2000 9:30 AM
		To:	Multiple recipients of list
		Subject:	Re: FACTS ABOUT TENNESSEE ILLNESSES

		Good morning:

		Please allow me to introduce myself.  I am an attorney
licensed in Tennessee 
		and am honored to represent Oak Ridge and other
environmental and nulear 
		weapons "whistleblower" workers.  When history is written,
IMHO the Michael 
		Fumentos of this world will be remembered as bitter
partisans who knew not 
		the law, and who had contempt for both science and human
rights.  Ms. Cheryll 
		Dyer makes very good points in her post.  DOE hostility to
the sick workers 
		and Nashville Tennessean investigation was also indulged in
by Tennessee 
		state officials, Lockheed Martin managers, and other
"professionals" on this 
		list.  I've read and analyzed your listserv postings of the
last several 
		years on the subject, and shared some of them with the sick
workers in Oak 
		Ridge.  

		It seems that at least a vocal minority of radiation
protection personnel 
		exhibit an almost Manichean "us-against-them" mentality.
They display 
		instant hostility to all news media coverage and public
scrutiny of nuclear 
		and environmental issues.  This attitude does not contribute
to radiation 
		protection.  It does not create understanding.    It does
not fulfill your 
		profession's noble goal of saving human lives from horrible
painful cancer 
		deaths.

		Some of your you who write seem extremely unhappy -- even
wildly indignant 
		about nearly everything critical, questioning or skeptical
about radiation 
		exposures.  This is not thought, it is anger.  This anger is
misplaced.  This 
		anger is unfair.  This anger does not help protect the
people who do all the 
		working, the breathing and the dying in contaminated places
like K-25.  

		Some of you instantly seize on each new report of worker
concerns as 
		"evidence" that "everyone's out to get US."  Well, who the
heck is "US," 
		anyway?  Do y'all want to be part of the solution or part of
the problem?  
		Since some of you see this as an adversarial,
us-against-them proposition, as 
		the old labor song said, just "whose side are you on" --
management's or the 
		sick workers?  Is that written in a Health Physics or
Radiation Protection 
		textbook somewhere?

		Isn't the idea of radiation protection was to protect worker
safety, rather 
		than industry reputations and corporate liability?  I guess
that I am being 
		naive.    No one on this list had anything good to say about
the Nashville 
		Tennessean articles.  No one wrote that the questions,
concerns and issues 
		raised were legitimate.  No one wrote to say that
independent investigations 
		were need.    No one wrote to say that anything could be
improved, changed or 
		modified at K-25. Where is you compassion?

		Although DOE and its contractor had planned to take
biological samples of 
		K-25 workers, to this day, no one has been tested.  Wonder
why?  Meanwhile, 
		thousands of workers in Oak Ridge work in ancient,
radiologically and 
		chemically contaminated buildings.  DOE has never answered
my questions about 
		how many workers in Oak Ridge workers work in contaminated
buildings.  The 
		answer is thousands.

		ALARA principles would have counseled against locating the
Oak Ridge TSCA 
		Incinerator -- the Nation's first radioative and toxic waste
incinerator -- 
		in the midst of ridge and valley topography with complex
microclimates that 
		have hardly been studied yet, near two enormous polluting
TVA coal-fired 
		powerplants, in the midst of a Superfund site with 4.2
million pounds of 
		mercury, over 13 million cubic feet of radioactive waste
(enough to fill in 
		Neyland Stadium at the University of Tennessee), and what
the State of 
		Tennessee has called a "witches' brew" of other hazardous
materials.  Yet 
		that is exactly what DOE did.  Why?  Who spoke out against
it at the time?  
		Who said, we need to know more first?  Who said study the
microclimates. Who 
		out there just said "whoa"?  In fact, although NOAA had an
ambitious project 
		to study the microclimates with ten towers around Oak Ridge,
DOE preferred 
		less data at higher cost.

		ALARA principles would also appear to dictate that thousands
of office and 
		lab workers not work in the midst of a giant Superfund site
-- particularly 
		not one where decontamination and decomissioning of what was
once the world's 
		largest building is taking place.  Who is advocating the
need to build new 
		office buildings to house K-25 workers, away from the
decontamination and 
		decommissioning work?

		The entire tone of your listserv discussion about sick Oak
Ridge is all too 
		reminiscent of that of the tatterdemalion Oak Ridge City
Council, which is in 
		deep denial.  The City of Oak Ridge is now wasting money on
TV advertisements 
		with bucolic scences.  Meanwhile, toward the sick workers,
Oak Ridge has 
		shown condescension and derision, wishing the sick workers
would go away or 
		just die off.  They're not going away.  It's their country.
It's their boat. 
		 They have a right to rock it.  I reckon that they will
continue to do so 
		until radiation and chemical protection, whistleblower
protection and nuclear 
		workers' compensation become realities instead of
platitudes.

		Too much of DOE nuclear weapons plant management culture
remains hierarchical 
		and authoritarian --  hostile and at best sadistic toward
workers raising 
		environmental, safety and health concerns.  That culture and
that hostility 
		can no longer endure.  As Dr. Karl Z. Morgan, the father of
health physics 
		wrote before his death: "No society that severely restricts
freedom of speech 
		will ultimately survive."

		With kindest regards,

		Edward A. Slavin, Jr.
		P.O. Box 3084
		St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084
		(904) 471-7023
		(904) 471-9918 (fax)
	
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