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Dear colleagues this I have mentioned in my
comment:
To
educate people first of all is necessary to reduce the large gap of
perception of risk, both political and public and professional and
public. France has enough experience in dealing with both situation,
the country's nuclear power programme is supported both left and right wing
governments and the general public.
Health
Physicist and other scientific
professionals are among them.
Jose
Julio Rozental
Israel
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, December 24, 2002 7:32
PM
Subject: 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
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