Dear Edith and Norm....

["Michael S Ford" <MFORD@pantex.com>]

Edith and Norm,   [please forgive the length of the posting]

Thank you for your postings.  You both appear to be sincerely devoted to a search for the truth.  As that search involves cluster sites in and around nuclear facilities, you might imagine that the folks on RADSAFE might have their antennae raised due to previous *predetermined outcome* studies that have only been conducted for the sole purpose of turning the public against nuclear power.

If you are truly interested in finding the TRUTH, I would ask you to please consider broadening your studies as Bjorn has pointed out, to areas that do not have nuclear facilities, but similar other factors, or areas that have nuclear facilities without an accompanying industrial sector.

I would also invite you to investigate some of the population studies performed in some of the high dose rate areas of the world and compare those reports against the low-dose theories championed by those you have mentioned.  Perhaps you might be so kind to explain in your own words how those in high dose rate areas of the world might survive with long- average life spans if low-dose radiation is causing so much death and disease throughout the world.

This also begs the question as to how we humans survived as a species if low dose radiation is a toxic agent.  As you know, radiation loses its intensity over time.  But if you turn back the clock, its intensity increases... which means that when life first began on the planet, the radiation levels were ten times higher than today.  So again, please look at the low-dose toxicity issue with an eye to answering that discrepancy.

Finally, search the literature for the works of Sternglass, Goffman, Stewart, et al anti-nuclear authors and also review the criticisms of their work.  I hope that you will look at both sides with an open mind while understanding that *everyone* in RADSAFE land needs to be able to objectively study and debate opposing views.

I write to you as a relative neophyte in the radiation protection profession.  I have only been working in this field for 15 years and find each day how truly little that I do know in this expansive area of worker and public safety and health.  However, as I see billions and trillions of dollars of public monies being spent on mitigating postulated hazards of low-dose radiations, I question whether that money is better spent in others areas of society with clearly pressing needs.

As you can see below, I have *other* affiliations.  I am an operational health physicist. There are many within the policy-setting organizations (NCRP, ICRP, IAEA) who have never been in an operational setting where they have to (or are fortunate enough to) work with radiation workers on a daily basis, much less ever having to explain the LNT model to someone or explain why they shouldn't be concerned about contracting cancer from their 15 mrem dose.

I can understand how easy it is for the public and occupational radiation workers to be confused about this because they read the publications of the above organizations which state in black and white that there is a *risk* of fatal cancer from a 15 mrem dose!  Even if the risk is minuscule, they only see it as a *risk* to them.  If you share these perceptions, I can understand why you would.

Unfortunately, our erudite, academician *friends* in these organizations see this merely as a good math and book-keeping exercise that maintains the uncertainty surrounding radiation which thereby continues to fill the research coffers.  Now don't get me wrong - research is a great tool when it arrives at an answer.  But if the only answer from research is that *more research is needed* (for over 50 years), then it is apparent that the intent of the research is less than honorable.

v/r
Michael Ford
Texas Radiation Advisory Board
Amarillo, TX


>>> egbur%adelphia.net@internet.pantex.com 10 Aug 00 2:19:00 AM >>>
 Why do you as a scientist  reject this project whose purpose is to find the
source of the cancer cluster in Toms River and may have implications for
other communities?   ...
************************************************************************
The RADSAFE Frequently Asked Questions list, archives and subscription
information can be accessed at http://www.ehs.uiuc.edu/~rad/radsafe.html