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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
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