Re: loosing, Tooth Fairy Project

["Jerry Cohen" <jjcohen@prodigy.net>]

Your point is well taken, but there has been  a difference in setting
radiation exposure criteria. The post office   doesn't have  responsibility
for making the rules that govern e-mail, and the gas light people did not
set the standards for electric light bulb usage.  When there is a conflict
between  the public interest and vested interests of the standard setters,
the public interest will usually suffer. You can't command major funding
levels to control minor problems, and as you must be aware, funding is the
mothers milk for any bureaucracy. The EPA, NRC, and similar organizations
must maintain the perception of potentially serious risks from low-level
radiation if they are to remain viable. If the NRDC,  Greenpeace, and other
anti-nuke groups  did not exist, the regulators would have had to invent
them!




-----Original Message-----
From: Ted Rockwell <tedrock@cpcug.org>
To: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
Date: Thursday, August 03, 2000 9:40 PM
Subject: Re: loosing, Tooth Fairy Project


>You wrote:
>..
>    When I visualize a world in which low-dose radiation exposures are
>generally accepted as being safe or possibly beneficial, I see the
abolition
>of ALARA, along with more than half of the jobs held by health physicists.
>Essentially, you are asking people to commit occupational suicide.
>    I don't know  the extent to which the current highly restrictive
>criteria for radiation exposure might have been motivated by self-interest
,
>but I would not rule out the possibility that it played a significant role.
>jjcohen@prodigy.net
>
>There is certainly a problem there.  But that is true for every
>technological change.  (The post-office is worried about competition from
>e-mail.  Light-bulbs drove out gas lights.)  But people who were once fully
>occupied making bombs are now presenting papers on the complicated problems
>of protecting the environment from the perils of low-level radiation.
>
>These people were smart and creative enough to make a career out of the new
>field of atomic bomb design.  And then they were able to use the talents
>developed in that enterprise to get into risk analysis.  I am completely
>confident that such people are also smart enough to help us make the
>literally thousands of new nuclear power plants, and all the nuclear
>technologies not yet even envisioned.  And health physicists will still be
>needed in an ALARA-free world, to show us how to run facilities more
>effectively, more profitably and still ensure worker safety.  No other
>public hazard protection is based on ALARA; neither should radiation be.
>
>Ted
>
>
>
>
>
>
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