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John —
Please see "Manual of Protective Action Guides and Protective Actions for
Nuclear Incidents" (EPA 400-R-92-001, October 1991). This document establishes
the range of projected dose at which certain protective actions (i.e.,
sheltering, evacuation) should be implemented in the U.S. In establishing a
range of 1-5 rem TEDE for evacuation, EPA specifically adopts the rounded BEIR
III value of "a risk of 3E-4 cancer deaths per person-rem" (page C-10).
Several pages (B-18 through B-22) specifically discuss cancer risk.
So, in my humble opinion, EPA HAS ... specifically in
reference to emergency planning ... said that small amounts of radiation
delivered to large populations WILL kill.
My $0.02 worth ...
Jim Hardeman
Jim_Hardeman@dnr.state.ga.us
>>> <RuthWeiner@AOL.COM> 9/23/2002 9:57:22 >>> In a message dated 9/22/02 11:07:19 PM Mountain Daylight Time, jenday1@MSN.COM writes: > What is interesting is that to the best of my knowledge,
no federal agency
> or organization, i.e., NCRP, NRC, DOE, FEMA, etc., have every made the claim > that small amounts of radiation will kill. The LNT is for regulatory > purposes, not emergency planning. For a while, DOE was reporting only latent cancer fatalities (LCF) in its environmental impact statements. DOE and NRC both still report LCFs in these documents and they are CERTAINLY for small amounts of ionizing radiation. On a personal note: in a talk in Aiken, SC I mentioned that I thought DOE should report only doses and not LCF, since this was just a conversion with a multiplication factor. The redoubtable Ed Lyman was asked his opinion of this, and on the next day, the front page of the Augusta newspaper quoted Lyman as saying "Dr. Weiner says radiation doesn'r cause cancer." As you can imagine, there were somewhat unpleasant consequences for me,(though doubtless not for Lyman). Ruth Ruth Weiner, Ph. D. ruthweiner@aol.com |