Re: Background radiation, Geiger counters, and health effects

[BLHamrick@AOL.COM]

In a message dated 6/5/2003 9:11:09 PM Pacific Standard Time, slavak@attbi.com writes:


> No, it's not as easy as walking around with a survey meter.  But there are lots of people who know how to identify pathways, collect samples, and make appropriate measurements.  Gamma spectroscopy identifies those radionuclides that aren't part of the natural environment.  Air, water, and crop samples can tell you if radioactive material really is finding it's way to the public. These activities happen around large nuclear facilities every day.  So it's far from an insurmountable feat, and it beats the heck out of neverending insinuation and speculation.



There are people that can identify pathways, collect samples, analyze them with the appropriate MDA, and it all costs a significant amount of money if we are talking about a site of more than a few acres.


Gamma spectroscopy may identify certain nuclides that are not a part of nature, but it will NOT differentiate between natural radium and radium that is present in the environment above "undisturbed" background levels" due to human actitivities.  And, it will not differentiate between the naturally present carbon-14 and the carbon-14 contaminant introduced by man, nor the natural tritium and the tritium contaminant.


The majority of the very expensive site investigations and remediations will involve uranium, thorium and radium, and the establishment of what the undisturbed background is or was is a very expensive proposition.


Air, water and crop samples may sound like a simple "just do it" project, but it is not.  How many do you take?  Where do you take them?  Over what period of time?  What should your counting MDA be (i.e., what dose level are you trying to rule out, and how do you relate that back to a specific concentration of radioactivity in, e.g., an asparagus crop)?  These are not simple matters.  


I'm sorry, but that is precisely the attitude that has resulted in billions of U.S. dollars spent on lowering THEORETICAL excess risks of fatal cancers in this country by increments of one in a million, even while one in four of us ACTUALLY die of the disease, and our hospitals' doors are closing around us for lack of funds.  Americans need to wake up to this waste, fraud and abuse.


Barbara