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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
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