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Re: DU in Iraq



>75 tons of depleted uranium peppering the countryside of Iraq is a small 

>price to pay for avoided sorrow and grief of the families of these brave 

>and noble patriots. I most certainly don't want to be the first on my block 

>to see my son come home in a box or have to go to Washington, D.C., to 

>touch his name on a wall because he never came home.



>What is our fascination with something that may hypothetically kill us at 

>some distant point in the future rather than the real hazards that will 

>kill you right now?



------------

I basically agree about the perspective above. The main point about 

calculating the 75 tons/600,000 tons is to have a clear number for those who 

choose that"amount-line-of-argument" (about the distant future etc) - to 

simply have a number to give them. The risk communication is very different 

depending on who is communicating with whom. Take the following parts of a 

stake holder situation:



Engineer, scientist, journalist, worried general public, lawyers, 

administrator/regulator, politician, anti-everything activist. Now combine 

(I get 20 basic combinations):



Engineer-scientist

Engineer-journalist

Journalist-politician and so on.



Then add that we communicate in two directions and with logic vs. emotions. 

This gives us 80 combinations. We hopefully expect that the 

engineer-scientist use logic/fact based reasoning in both directions. The 

scientist (S) talking with a journalist (J) may result in 1: S(logic)->J,  

2:J(emotional)->S

and so on.



Depending on the character of the risk communication we need to see 

arguments, numbers and so on from many different sides. Being aware of the 

complexity we may be able to choose a good strategy for risk communication. 

If someone has seen a scary (totally unrealistic) movie about radioactivity 

and is worried about it and one responds with some numbers there may be no 

real communication. Some people may buy the 75/600,000 argument (I would 

question relevance in terms of exposure), others may just want to hear an 

answer to "would you be afraid of visiting Iraq because of the 75 tons of 

(extra) uranium there?".



The risk communication challenge (about radiation) is always there 

regardless of what we think about it.



My personal ideas only,



Bjorn Cedervall   bcradsafers@hotmail.com



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