Radiophobia-Paranoia? Risk communication

["Bjorn Cedervall" <bcradsafers@HOTMAIL.COM>]

>Is public radiophobia a manifestation of paranoia? I think not !

I agree. Paranoia is a clinical condition that can be related to various 

kinds of mental illnesses. The word radiophobia is perhaps unfortunate 

because phobias also have their chapter in psychiatry books. But most of us 

(Radsafers) know what we mean - being hysterical about radiation.



"Radiophobia" can be, and often is, related to lack of understanding, lack 

of education, lack of perspective. It can be there with a few becquerels 

that the person in question has not heard about before. If this is the case 

say with some escaped Cs 137 atoms there is at least a reason.



Then on the other hand there are, as I see them, a few truly radio_phobic_ 

individuals who in a paranoid sense "perceive" (in a totally sick sense) 

radiation in their home or whatever - call the police to remove the 

radiation. The police arrives - talks nicely to the person and says "we are 

now shutting down the radiation to a zero level" and the sick person calms 

down and feels relief.



Perhaps it is important to clarify this difference (if it is possible...) to 

politicians and others who take sickening decisions...



In the case of lacking understanding, education etc it is more of a "normal" 

problem like the emotion part vs. the logic part of our brains.

We all have both parts - what matters is the balance between the two and how 

this matches the situation in question.



Remember that logic and emotions can be there in the same person without any 

simple relation. I scared the he.k out of my mom (former language teacher) 

in 1986 by telling that I had 400 Bq Cs in my trousers (result of the 

Chernobyl catastrophe) - I had _calculated_ (using wellknown controversial 

cancer risk factors) that wearing the trousers day and night for a year was 

less risky than a few puffs on a cigarette. I had "400 whatever it was" in 

my trousers and it was a big deal - they quickly - without a reason to me - 

found their way to a laundry machine. But at the same time my mom is very 

difficult to beat in chess - now at age 73 she beats relatively clever and 

experienced players if they are naive enough to accept the challenge. 

Conclusions:



1. A person with excellent capacity for logic can be totally irrational if 

given facts that he/she cannot understand and put into appropriate 

perspective.

2. Communication about risk facts according to point 1 above is 

questionable. It was my fault - either I shouldn't have said anything - or 

just said - "it was nothing worth mentioning". This is perhaps one of the 

major problems some of us have in risk communication because we were trained 

in math etc and to get everything right to the third decimal - and in an 

example like this one _it does not matter_ if we are ten magnitudes off in 

the discussion.



I apologize if this was too lengthy and seemed too off-topic (as well as may 

overlap with a previous contribution some time ago) but risk communication 

problems reasonably result in a lot of wasted money in our society (now with 

more mobile phone transmitters etc in Sweden some people want "radiation 

free communities" - who believes that this is not costly?).



If we cannot communicate radiation safety to lay people - all this knowledge 

about decay, 1/r2, build up, shielding or whatever has little value - 

because much of our society will brutally just say "I don't like it" and 

continue keeping track of movie stars, basket ball, the beer in the 

refrigerator and perhaps occasionally look at the electricity bills.



My personal ideas only,



Bjorn Cedervall   bcradsafers@hotmail.com

http://www.geocities.com/bjorn_cedervall/





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