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Fwd: News on BNL Deer -Factors at play? #2
Radsafe:
I had sent this to Bill Lipton yesterday, and overlooked sending it to Radsafe as well.
S. Farber
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Radsafe:
In reply to the note below from Bill Lipton, I would suggest we know essentially nothing about where this one deer spent its time and what it ate. Thus it is not just an issue of variability of activity with locations vs. time.
Cs-137 levels in plants even in a narrow geographic area can vary widely and with time in a single area. The Swedes [see Studsvik newsletter -no citation at hand] studied roe deer and moose a few years ago and reported sharp variability with time through the year in Cs-137 as the animals diet varied from summer to winter. I am also aware that many years ago certain cows on small family farms near Maine Yankee showed elevated Cs-137 due to eating certain berries growing at certain times of year in that area, and that cranberries were found to have a particularly high transfer factor from soil to plant per unit deposition. Are these variations in diet by various animals ingesting residual weapons test fallout primarily, a serious programmatic failure by any nearby nuclear licensee?
Did this deer recently sampled near Brookhaven spend most of its time in an area of somewhat higher Cs-137 levels in vegetation than the deer last year?
The article reports a level of 21 pCi per some unspecified unit vs. 11 pCi per some unit [hopefully the same unit of mass or volume] peak in one of last year's deer. How many deer were sampled last year to get a mean of 1.6 pCi per unit. There is obviously quite a lot of variability in reported deer activity even last year given the peak and the reported mean taken at face value.
Suggesting, as Bill Lipton does, that the recent observation near Brookhaven would be a serious programmatic failure on Brookhaven part if one young deer were found with a peak of 21 Vs 11 pCi per unit of weight in one other deer sample last year [age, time of year sampled] is a quite a stretch.
The occurrence of activity in this one young deer is worth evaluating carefully with more data than I've got in front of me. It appears to be of insignificant public health consequence, however.
Stewart Farber
Consulting Public Health Scientist
email: SAFarberMSPH@cs.com
(203) 367-0791
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In a message dated 2/19/02 2:50:36 PM Pacific Standard Time, liptonw@DTEENERGY.COM writes:
You seem to be addressing the variability of Cs-137 with location. The issue, here, is variability over time at a single location. The data, subject to verification, indicate a significant spike in the Cs-137 found in an animal potentially impacted by BNL. ............... If this is confirmed as due to BNL operations, it represents a significant programmatic failure, regardless of dose.