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I think Barbara has an excellent point that we all
need to ponder: how do we do this needed education? (Slightly
off the mark, but I believe that the same EPA that demands the referenced risk
of 1E-4 or less, also uses 2% per Rem (0.02 times the population
exposed) to calculate that additional death rate from cancer. I'm
quite surprised at such a high figure!
Ed Battle
I agree. I don't think they understand this at all. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is absolutely safe. I think this has to be one of the fulcrums of risk education. Nothing is safe, but some things are safer than others, and that's where the education needs to begin. As distasteful as it may be to some, short of a miracle, we are all going to die. Given that, the question is, where is our money best spent to extend lifetimes on average? Where the lifetime risk of fatal cancer is between 20 - 25%, it surely is not best to spend millions or billions on reducing excess risks in the range of 0.01-0.0001% (i.e., EPA's recommended CERCLA risk range of 1E-4 to 1E-6). That's just a horrendous, foolish waste of resources, in my opinion, especially where, as with radiation, the risk at these low levels, is not real, but theoretical. The public needs to understand these issues, because we are losing opportunities to provide better education, better healthcare, and a better quality of life in a myriad of other ways, to real people. Instead, we spend our public monies providing highly speculative benefits to some very small theoretical population. It's just nuts, in my opinion. Barbara |