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Re: Health effects near nuclear power plants
Strontium is a congener of (in the same group as) calcium, and is
incorporated into any tissue that incorporates calcium. Sr-90 behaves
chemically virtually exactly like non-radioactive strontium. Hence the
notion that baby teeth will give an indication of Sr-90 in the children's
food chain. However, Sr-90 is Sr-90, and the only way to tell if it comes
from atmospheric fallout (from atmospheric testing) or from a nuclear power
plant is to compare the amount or concentration of environmental Sr-90
downwind from a known emitter with the amount or concentration of Sr-90 from
an area that is not downwind and at the right distance from a known emitter.
I question whether collecting teeth provides any useful information, because
the Sr-90 would be from dietary sources like milk or some vegetables that
incorporate calcium (and therefore strontium). So the Sr-90 in child's baby
teeth would come from the milk the child drank, which comes from a dairy,
which gets it from dairy farms whose cows get it from fallout on grass they
graze on or other food they eat. Since dairies blend milk from different
farms, and cows are fed from more than a single source, it must be nearly
impossible to connect a particular tooth with the grass or other feed that
received Sr-90 fallout. The Hanford dose reconstruction study, if I am not
mistaken, found that the largest radioiodine doses were from milk sold in
Moses Lake, Washington, which is more than a hundred miles generally upwind
from Hanford (please correct me if I am wrong about this -- I am going from
memory). The connection was made by carefully tracing where the dairies got
their milk from during the 1950s and 1960s.
Sr-90 has a 30-year half life.
Ruth Weiner
ruth_weiner@msn.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Norman & Karen Cohen <norco@bellatlantic.net>
To: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
Date: Wednesday, April 26, 2000 6:07 PM
Subject: Re: Health effects near nuclear power plants
>Hi Vincent,
>It was Sr-90, not Ce-137. But that probably doesn't affect the rest of your
>arguments.
>Sr90 is emitted by nuke plants and the emissions show up on yearly reports
issued by
>each nuke plant and available at the NRC. I have the whole pile of them for
salem 1
>and 2.
>The questions are - does a relatively small amouint of sr-90 as reported by
the NRC
>able to produce the effects shown in the Tooth Fairy studies, and is all of
the
>sr-90 emissions being caught or reported?
>
>Norm
>
>
>Vincent King wrote:
>
>> Radsafers:
>>
>> With all due respect to Norm (whose questions I appreciate, by the
>> way, even if I disagree with his conclusions), the posting below is
>> exactly right. It is absurdly easy to show that nuclear power
>> plants cannot cause the claimed health effects.
>>
>> If there is enough Cs-137 to show up in baby teeth, or enough
>> radiation dose to the surrounding population to affect infant
>> mortality, there is CERTAINLY would be enough radiation or released
>> radionuclides that it would be easily distinguishable from
>> background. You can't get the effects that are claimed to occur at
>> a distance without (1) direct radiation, which shows up easily on,
>> say, a TLD, or (2) released radionuclides, which are equally easy
>> to detect in air or water samples. There is no mystical suspension
>> of the laws of meteorology or physics that allows measurable
>> effects offsite without seeing the harmful agent somewhere on the
>> way.
>>
>> Even if you choose to ignore the results of the comprehensive
>> environmental monitoring all NPPs are required to perform (which
>> are quite sensitive, as everyone who conducts them knows), or the
>> results of effluent monitoring (which are the locations where any
>> released radionuclides are most concentrated), why don't the
>> critics ever produce monitoring results of their own to prove their
>> point? There is absolutely no restriction on someone conducting
>> their own environmental sampling program, rather than relying on
>> the supposed effect somewhere 'out there', to prove their
>> contention. But I think we all know why that doesn't occur.
>>
>> (And sorry, I don't buy the Cs-137 in baby teeth 'proof' until you
>> tell me how you adjust for the residual Cs-137 from atmospheric
>> testing, demonstrate a statistically valid increase associated with
>> a particular site, and give a plausible reason why the Cs-137
>> doesn't show up at the effluent release point.)
>>
>> Vincent King
>> vincent.king@doegjpo.com
>>
>> ______________________________ Reply Separator
_________________________________
>> Subject: Health effects near nuclear power plants
>> Author: Holloway3@aol.com at Internet
>> Date: 4/25/00 6:38 PM
>>
>> The fatal weakness of the various claims of health effects near nuclear
power
>> plants is that the emissions from the plants are so low that they are
>> insignificant compared to the radiation always present from natural
sources.
>> Even the residual fallout from weapons testing of the 1950s and early
1960s
>> is more abundant in than emissions from reactors. The claim of health
>> effects from nuclear power plants just won't hold up under scrutiny as
most
>> of the readers of this list know. Making comparisons with natural
background
>> radiation is something that should be done more often to combat the
poorly
>> informed activists.
>>
>> To counter the flaws in their logic, the activists often claim that
>> "artificial" radiation is somehow different and more harmful than natural
>> radiation. They don't elaborate much on this theory, though. I think we
>> should counter this claim by making the truthful statement that fission
>> products are "natural" and "organic" because they were ultimately derived
>> from uranium that once was dug up from the earth. Once Christie Brinkley
>> learns that uranium is really a natural element, I am sure she will
accept it
>> as being from the earth and therefore good.
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>
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