Re: Critics Allege Infant Mortality Rate

[Franz Schoenhofer <schoenho@via.at>]

At 11:00 25.04.2000 -0500, you wrote:
>Hi Sandy,
>
>I respectfully suggest that "absurd" is too strong a word. I know Mr. Mangano
>personally. He is very careful with his studies and contentions. Something
is happening
>to infant mortality around nuke plants.
>
>    A study by Mangano on Salem (NJ) County, shows higher infant
mortality, low infant
>birth weights, and certain immune diseases all higher than national averages.
>

Yes, we had this nonsense - I repeat: "nonsense" - already many years
before in Europe. We had the Sellafield story, where someone found that
there is elevated childhood leukemia (I think it was this kind of cancer)
in the vicinity of Sellafield in England. The significance of the incidence
was doubted and it was very clearly demonstrated that there are many more
areas in England, far away from any reprocessing plant or nuclear power
plant, where incidence of childhood leukemia is higher than the English
average. Of course!!! In order to generate an average you have to have
areas with lower than average and areas with higher than average. 

We had the case of a German NPP where activists claimed that crayfish had
died in a river because of the impact of the NPP. Maybe it is not a
coincidence that crayfish is in German "Krebs" and cancer is as well
"Krebs". That probably the increasing pollution of the river and sure a
virus disease had caused this was no argument for the activists. 

We had the case of activists claiming that tritium emitted from the
Karlsruhe reprocessing pilot plant had killed the trees in the surrounding.
The fact, that we had in the late fifties and early sixties tritium
concentrations in precipitation and in air, which were higher by orders of
magnitude and that the trees were not reported to have died, did not
disturb the activists.

I have heard for decades from activists that a mass of plutonium of the
size of an orange distributed around the world would kill every living
creature (including man). I have since decades argued that there have been
tons of plutonium distributed evenly and finely around the world due to the
nuclear tests and that not only mankind but also animals still live. The
next time I hear again the stereotype claim, that a mass of plutonium of
the size.....

I read all the time about the deadly plutonium and that it is the most
deadly element existing. I say all the time that radium-226 is far more
radiotoxic (about 500 times if I take the numbers from the limits for
instance in water) and that one drinks and eats it all the time and that we
still live. What do I read "next day"? I read that plutonium is the most
deadly element existing.

Why trying to educate people? Why trying to spread a little knowledge about
radioactivity? Everybody acts according to "I have made up my mind, do not
disturb me with the facts!". Mass media earn their money (see my recent
comment on the 15 000 dead from Chernobyl). 


>Please strive to keep an open mind on these matters.


I cannot accept this pledge. I do not understand how somebody like me and a
large number of RADSAFErs should not have shown extensively that we have an
open mind. Yes, a minority do not look like that, but maybe they have been
so frustrated by the constant attacks of uneducated people, who have not
the slightest scientific background, but try to make money by the political
way, to sell "illusions" and "good conscious of having done something for
the planet" and being part of warriors (yes, they call themselves even
openly as the Greenpeace Warriors!!! appealing to the low instincts of
mankind) who help the good to win against the life threatening bads and who
safe our world. We have studied these questions for many years, we have
worked for many years in the field, we have acquired knowledge, but then we
have to hear from certain groups that we are a bunch of idiots, paid by the
nuclear lobby and too silly to understand what is going on.

I think you have to ask others to keep an open mind.

>
>Peace,

I used to have in my office a Chinese proverb hanging on the wall:

"If you are always smiling you will not get anything except wrinkles in
your face."

Franz


Franz Schoenhofer
Habicherg. 31/7
A-1160 Vienna
Austria
Tel.: +43-1-495 53 08
Fax.: same number
mobile phone: +43-664-338 0 333
e-mail: schoenho@via.at


Office:
Hofrat Dr. Franz Schoenhofer
Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management
Radiation Protection Department (BMLUW I/8 U)
Radetzkystr. 2
A-1031 Vienna
AUSTRIA

phone: -43-1-71172-4458
fax: -43-1-7122331

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