Precautionary principle

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

This is in response to a request for a reference (I lost the email)


Tengs, et al "Five Hundred Life-saving Interventions and Their Cost 

Effectiveness"  RISK ANALYSIS v. 15, 1995, p. 369 et seq.

The cost is to save a year of life in the U. S.

Some examples:


Median  cost: $42,000

Mandatory auto seat belts: $69

Benzene standard of 1 ppm v 10 ppm: $240,000

Chlorination of drinking water: $3100

Collimators on x-ray equipment: $23,000

Radiation emission control at NRC-licensed facilities: $2.6E9

Rad emission control at uranium fuel cycle facilities: $3.4E10

Chloroform reduction at 33 worst  pulp and paper mills:$9.9E10

All vaccinations: $<0 (a positive benefit)

Colorectal cancer screening for people aged 40+: $4500


What would I use?  I'd look at the methods used in the Tengs study, for 

openers, and try to estimate the cost.  Then, I'd use some common sense.  If 

people in a community (like mine) have been drinking between 10 and 50 ppm 

arsenic in their drinking water for decades -- generations (the source is 

natural) -- with no noticeable effect at all, I'd look at the cost of 

remediating to 10 ppm (just as the city of Albuq. is doing. 


40 CFR Part 191 (which now applies only to the WIPP) is a perfectly 

reasonable standard for a HLW repository.  The allowed releases were based on 

those from an unmined uranium ore body.  It was an expensive standard to 

implement, but not nearly as expensive as the new standard for spent nuclear 

fuel repositories.


Those are the sort of things I would use as guidelines in setting standards.

Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.

ruthweiner@aol.com