Re: How much plutonium?????

[Bernard L Cohen <blc+@pitt.edu>]

On Mon, 8 May 2000, Bernard L Cohen wrote:
> 
> 	--A typical estimate is that one lung cancer may be caused by each
> 0.000200 grams of plutonium inhaled by people (the easiest available
> reference for me is  my paper in Health Physics 32:359; 1977, but later
> papers give similar results). The number of cases that may be caused by
> 1/2 kilo = 230 grams is thus 230 / 0.000200 = 1,150,000; this is only a
> tiny fraction of the population of the Earth.

	--My apologies -- I was thinking about 1/2 pound rather than 1/2
kilo. The number of cases may therefore be 500 / 0.000200 = 2,500,000

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