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Re: Radiological Stress Victims
Good grief! That's 10 Million pCi/day, not 10 Billion. It was 10 Billion
total ingested by Byers.
This is actually "Ra-226 equivalent." And that's actually 3-4 vials per day,
each with 1 uCi Ra-226 and 1 uCi Ra-228, with Ra-228 counted as 2.5 times
the Ra-226 hazard, reported as "2.5 uCi Ra-226-equivalent" for a total 3.5
uCi Ra-226 equivalent per vial. So taking 3+ vials/day avg, that's 10 uCi
(10,000,000 pCi) per day. Taking his 3 years of ingestion (starting at age
51 in 1928) as roughly 1,000 days, that's 10,000,000,000 pCi total
ingestion.
Why pCi you ask? :-) Because EPA's limit for drinking water is 5 pCi/L!
See, e.g.:
http://cnts.wpi.edu/RSH/Docs/Muckerheide/JM_95radium.htm
And FDA campaigned to Congress on the Byers' case to get control of
radioactivity to be used only in medicine (on behalf of the medical
establishment) but did not evaluated the effects on the population that
ingested massive, but much lower, amounts than Byers. Of course, by then
they knew there was no evident effect, confirmed by the lack of effects in
those dial painters that did NOT eat the stuff in large quantities.
Of course, once the radium dial painters study had finally gotten under way,
in the 50s and 60s people had forgotten what was undocumented in the
literature. After the data was all pulled together at Argonne in the 1970s
with Robley Evans' initiative to set up the program, like the a-bomb
survivors program, for the lifetime of this highly-exposed population,
following Robley Evans retirement from MIT, the evidence was quickly
apparent that there are no adverse effects, and potentially beneficial
effects, so DOE quickly killed the program.
They also went after the RERF program, which escaped by covering up and
manipulating data to avoid the experience of the Argonne Center for Human
Radiobiology. RERF was afraid of termination, or at least severe cuts. The
most effective thing that RERF did was to eliminate the unexposed control
group (the exposed population was much healthier). They then used the "low
dose" group of the exposed group. This group was known to be affected by the
typical beneficial effects of low dose radiation, so they used a low-dose
part of the exposed population to eliminate the comparison to the unexposed
population. They also fudged the doses, eliminating the neutron component
when neutron activation was clearly seen in the areas of the bombs. They
have also continued to add a-bomb victims to the population, with dubious
justification, but which unsurprisingly add "effects" at the 5 cGy dose
group.
DOE also tried a few years ago to move the program to a certified
data-manipulator they had recruited from Canada to Columbia. This was
defeated. But there was a "blue ribbon panel" (yes they had the temerity to
actually call it that, especially since it was led by ICRP/NRBP's Roger
Clarke) to rework the RERF research program.
As long as they have control of the data manipulation, this unrepresentative
population will continue to be the "lead standard" for radiation protection
purposes, even though, e.g., something close to 100 million people per year
receive medical radiation exposure, with (what can be) well-known and
significant doses and dose measurements, and decades of follow-up, that show
no adverse effects below high-dose exposures except in a handful of weak and
unconfirmed studies by Stewart, Modan, and a few others.
Anyway, you needed the correction :-)
Regards, Jim
on 8/7/02 4:54 PM, Muckerheide at muckerheide@attbi.com wrote:
> Good point! It's just 'traumatic stress.' The significant fact however is the
> a 'traumatic stress' is based on fear of trauma. But radiological stress is
> caused by an intentional fraudulent case about the risk of radiation exposure.
> (This is 'terrorism' in its most effective form.) As Marshall Brucer wrote in
> the '60s-80s, including HP Newsletter, rad protection people learned that
> funding came from "scaring the pants off Congress." So an industry was born.
>
> But not really. Before the bomb, scaring the public about radiation by the FDA
> et al., reduced the 'competition' of low dose rad therapies to treat
> infections, etc., for the pharmaceutical companies/medical establishment for
> using the new (costly) 'wonder drugs' before and after WWII. (See, e.g.,
> Calabrese and Baldwin reporting on 'the demise of a legitimate hypothesis' in
> the late '30s (when the radium hazard fiction started with the death of Eben
> Byers who was ingesting 10 Billion pCi/day - vis reg limits by EPA at 4 pCi/L,
> 5 pCi/day? roughly 2000 pCi/year?
>
> Thanks.
> Regards, Jim
>
>
> on 8/7/02 11:16 AM, Bud Yard at Bud.Yard@state.tn.us wrote:
>
>> Radiation Stress,
>> OK, I did some simple research to find an answer. Information on radiation
>> stress can be found on the web at:
>>
>> http://www.rerf.or.ip/eigo/radefx/late/psycholo.htm.
>>
>> It is a psychological syndrome similar to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (as
>> one might suspect). I know also that there are those that will doubt the
>> credibility of PTSD, but there it is.
>>
>> As for the spider thing, if I were exposed (locked in) to a roomful of
>> spiders
>> without my approval and it stressed me out, I would indeed sue the heck out
>> of
>> somebody.
>>
>> I doubt if most victims of PTSD or radiation stress (if one concedes that
>> either syndrome is real) had any choice about his or her exposure.
>>
>>
>> Charles Richard Yard, M.P.H., Ph.D.
>>
>>
>>
>>>>> "Ralph E. Wild" <rewild@ATTGLOBAL.NET> 08/07/02 09:34AM >>>
>>
>> Jerry Cohen wrote:
>>
>>> In any case, radiological stress is apparently quite real, and
>>> affects many people who have never been anywhere near Hiroshima.
>>> Shouldn't all these "victims" be compensated for their lives having
>>> been degraded?
>>>
>>
>> So, John Madden should sue the airlines? I don't like spiders - who do
>> I sue?
>>
>> Ralph E. Wild
>>
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