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RE: Surviving a Dirty Bomb



Thanks John -- I take that as a compliment.
 
.....but as for actually doing what you suggest - I don't think think so: IMHO, each letter has to be addressed to a specific article in a newspaper, magazine, TV show or web page. There is no way I can keep track of articles in all different cities in the US & Canada. But surely there must be at least one or a few knowledgeable HPs, radiologists, physicists, engineers, etc. etc., in each city, who should be able to respond as I have (or better ! ).
 
Please feel free to use the letter I posted (as a starting point), to write up your own letter in your particular locality.
Actually, I hope it encourages people to do so.
 
One thing I have found helpful is an IAEA document, "Categorisation of Radiation Sources," at http://www.iaea.org/worldatom/About/GC/GC44/Documents/gc44-7_attachment.pdf  (the only problem I see with it is that there is no indication of the current prevalence of Co-60 teletherapy sources relative to Cs-137 ones -- especially since the messy Goiania incident in 1987 -- which btw involved a 51 TBq or 1375 Ci source.....  Also, the 10 pound Cs-137 source mentioned by Don Jordan on Friday seems to fit in the sterilization & food preservation irradiator category, since 300,000 curies is about 11.1 PBq -- the shielding for these, of course, is an in-ground swimming pool: kind of hard to run off with one of those :-)
 
Cheers,
 
Jaro 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: AndrewsJP@aol.com [mailto:AndrewsJP@aol.com]
Sent: Saturday June 15, 2002 12:28 PM
To: frantaj@AECL.CA; radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu
Subject: Re: Surviving a Dirty Bomb

In a message dated 6/15/02 9:04:45 AM Pacific Daylight Time, frantaj@AECL.CA writes:


I agree with Stewart & others that many people are using the "dirty bomb" threat to maximize public fear and even panic.
My reply to the newspaper story was as follows :


Perhaps you could send copies of this letter to the editors of other major newspapers and magazines here in the US, in Canada, and perhaps in Europe.  It might open some eyes and lead to more temperate reporting of this issue.

John Andrews
Knoxville, Tennessee