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RE: How do we educate people on the realities of risk?
I
think an alternative question is how to we educate health physics and other
scientific professionals in the realities of risk and how we have contributed to
the misunderstandings concerning radiation risk. The follow-on question is
how can we contribute to undoing the misunderstandings we have created.
Educating the public is part of the issue but the more important part is our
education and the changes we need to make to ensure that the concern we generate
in the public is equal to our scientific estimate of risk.
This
is an important topic because miss-perceived risk causes harm in the people we
are trying to protect and undermines the credibility of our
work.
Have a
Happy Holiday Season.
Eric
Daxon, Ph.D, C.H.P.
These
are my views and my views alone.
In a message
dated 12/24/02 4:27:39 AM Mountain Standard Time, joseroze@netvision.net.il
writes:
. However these fears have been
justified and strongly reinforced by the accident in Chernobyl, in which 31
workers died and which long-term evacuation of some 135.000 local people was
necessary. Although the actual loss of life at Chernobyl was relatively
small - comparable to any other severe industrial accident, the enforced
evacuation of a large number of people from their homes and land for a
period of years is very complicated to accept.
Did the Bhopal accident result in people refusing to use
hazardous chemical household products? Did the 1948 Texas City explosion
keep people from using gasoline and fuel oil? Did the gas pipeline
explosion here in New Mexico three years ago, that killed 15 people, keep
people from using natural gas? Did the Cerro Grande fire that evacuated
the entire city of Los Alamos keep people from (a) returning, (b) hiking and
camping in Bandelier National Monument and the adjacent National Forest?
Do the automobile accidents that kill about 40,000 people each year in
the U. S. keep people from driving?
On the last it is also necessary to add the
uncertainty of the future generation due
the
exposure.
Of all the spurious hand-wringing about
"environmental" issues that infuriate me, the "generational equity" issue
irritates me the most. Every generation (however one defines a
generation) has benefits and detriments that are different from other
generations. (And by the way, the "generation" that built the atom bomb
are mostly dead now -- I am not even of that generation.)
Poliomyelitis was the scourge of my childhood, and now we have polio vaccine
-- my children's generation has benefited from the scientific research of a
previous generation. To restore some humor to this: Art Buchwald
wrote some years ago: "Future generations will have to go out and find
their own natural resources. After all, we found
ours."
We can't only argue about the Russian system and Radiation
Safety Conception, take the Tokaimura Accident: How can public accept
so insensate error?
No worker ever cuts corners and makes a mistake?
Tokaimura was a serious violation of appropriate procedure by three individual
workers that killed two of them. There is nothing for the public to
"accept" or "not accept." Some years ago, in the city where I lived, two
pulp mill workers were killed by sulfur dioxide fumes while cleaning out a
large reaction vessel. Does the public still use paper
products?"
Japan birthplace of
culture and family respect!
No comment.
Ruth
Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.
ruthweiner@aol.com