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RE: How do we educate people on the realities of risk?



Right on, Eric!  Happy holidays to you, too!
 
Ted Rockwell
 
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu [mailto:owner-radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu]On Behalf Of Daxon, Eric G COL MEDCOM HQ
Sent: Tuesday, December 24, 2002 11:48 AM
To: radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu
Subject: 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.
-----Original Message-----
From: RuthWeiner@AOL.COM [mailto:RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]
Sent: Tuesday, December 24, 2002 10:05 AM
To: joseroze@netvision.net.il; radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu
Subject: Re: How do we educate people on the realities of risk?

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