Something about toxic substances, including radioactive ones

["ruth_weiner" <ruth_weiner@email.msn.com>]

I, like others, am pretty sick of the pros and cons about sick Oak Ridge
employees, compensation, attacks on DOE, etc, but (pace Melissa's warning) I
would like to add something I do believe is relevant: fear of  exposure to
hazardous chemicals, and the exploitation of that fear, is as pervasive,
insidious, and wrongheaded as the exaggerated fear of ionizing radiation and
ITS exploitation.

I am certain that a lot of hazardous compounds were (and are) used both in
the national laboratory system and in private industry and in university
laboratories.  Even before MSDS sheets became mandatory, bottles and drums
of chemicals were labeled with both appropriate warnings and appropriate
information.  Some of these compounds are indeed nasty and great care and
precautions must be taken in handling them (acetonitrile is pretty nasty
stuff, and I should perhaps have said so).  However, there are some
differences from ionizing radiation effects that should be noted:

1.  Unless the stuff gets on you or in you (including by inhalation) or
explodes near you, it's  not going to hurt you.  If it's not radioactive, it
doesn't radiate.  I am not sure what some correspondents meant by "exposed
to" but you can be in the same room with sealed drums of HCN or sealed tanks
of chlorine forever and nothing will happen if the drums stay sealed.
2.  Health effects, particularly pronounced health effects, are usually
immediate or happen very shortly after exposure.  The same LNT theory is
applied to chemical carcinogens as to ionizing radiation, with the same lack
of evidence and the same inference of latent death by extrapolation.
3.  The dose makes the poison.
4.  Some health effects can last a long time.  I worked with so much butanol
at one time that I lost my sense of smell for about two years, but I did get
it back.
5.  Some health effects are permanent.  Inhaled arsenic is a carcinogen, but
quite a bit of it has to be inhaled.  My point is: use of industrial
quantities of a number of chemicals can have bad adverse health effects,
especially if precautions are not followed, but the appearance of some vague
health effect  decades after exposure to small amounts of material is
unlikely.
5.  We have yet to strike an adequate balance between protecting workers
(and for that matter students) and appropriate use of these dangerous or
hazardous materials.  E.g.: remember using silver nitrate for gravimetric
analysis?  Well lots of schools don't do that any more because (yes) silver
nitrate in high enough concentration is explosive.  Also one can't pour it
down the drain any more so there is lots of dilute silver nitrate solution
sitting around in university and college basements.

I question what I read about the Oak Ridge workers for these reasons.  I
believe they must show causality before they are compensated.  I do not
believe that they were deliberately victimized by nasty DOE (which by the
way did not exist before 1974) just as the sale of Carbona (carbon
tetrachloride) or Flit (DDT) was not a deliberate attempt to poison America.
I just don't want to see anyone say "it's not radiation, it's those nasty
chemicals."  I do think this is an important issue for all of us (HPs and HP
wannabees like me) because of the recent rash of demands for compensation
for one thing and another.

Thanks for reading.  Sorry if this was off- topic.

Ruth F. Weiner, Ph. D.
7336 Lew Wallace NE
Albuquerque, NM
505-856-5011
fax 505-856-5564
ruth_weiner@msn.com


Ruth F. Weiner, Ph. D.
7336 Lew Wallace NE
Albuquerque, NM
505-856-5011
fax 505-856-5564
ruth_weiner@msn.com
ruth_weiner@ymp.gov



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