Re: Is it too late?

["Jerry Cohen" <jjcohen@PRODIGY.NET>]

Bill,

    My goodness, what a dismal thought! If, as you suggest, LNT is so

completely engrained in our regulatory structure that it is too late to do

anything about it, then indeed all debate on the subject is academic and

essentially meaningless. I'd hate to think that is the case since it would

mean that we are forever destined to carry the onerous baggage

(collective dose, ALARA, etc.) that goes along with LNT.

Is there no hope?  Please say it ain't so!        Jerry







----- Original Message -----

From: William V Lipton

To: RuthWeiner@AOL.COM

Cc: radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu

Sent: Monday, January 14, 2002 4:31 AM

Subject: Re: LNT





If, as you stated, "...the LNT debate is probably the most important debate

in health physics...", that is the reason for such a universal lack of

interest in hp among students, NOT a lack of academic funding.

I fail to understand how whomever "wins" this debate will affect anything

other than the egos of those involved.

At the risk of repeating myself too often (However, if no one's listening,

am I really repeating myself - let's debate that!), we have no one but

ourselves to blame for any overly restrictive standards.  When generous

research funding was available, it was expedient to promote LNT as a means

of procuring more than our fair share.  Well, strange bedfellows always look

a lot worse the morning after!  It's too late to change this, however.

The opinions expressed are strictly mine.

It's not about dose, it's about trust.

Bill Lipton

liptonw@dteenergy.com



RuthWeiner@AOL.COM wrote:

To Bill Lipton and others:

I, too, am of the opinion that the LNT debate is probably the most important

debate in health physics (and possibly in environmental health) today.  We

not only base all our regulations on this, we spend zillions predicting

completely hypothetical "latent cancer fatalities" (which should really read

"latent fatal cancers")  and are even applying this totally speculative

hypothesis to substances that have a well-extablished threshold of effect.

I would like to propose an amendment to NEPA that requires assessment of

DETECTABLE impact on the environment.  Detecting even 50% of background is

tough. 15 mrem/year is probably undetectable.





Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.

ruthweiner@aol.com







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