|
On public health risks from man-made
radioactivity in the environment:
--if there is a problem or a potential for a
problem, then monitoring is called for, expenses and all. That's part
of the cost of doing business or correcting past mistakes. And again,
there are many environmental monitoring programs around, as well as people who
know how to develop and implement them. Some problems are more difficult
than others, as Barbara points out below, but they are not insurmountable
or beyond the capabilities of those with that expertise;
--if there is not a problem or potential for a
problem, then there doesn't need to be monitoring (although there often is
anyway);
--if you don't know whether or not there is a
problem, I still say that knowledge obtained by taking a look is better
than speculation; then you can tell the speculators they were right or tell them
to take a hike. But I'm not
suggesting full-blown, round-the-clock environmental monitoring is
necessary to address every concern when a little research, or a few
well-considered screening samples, or just plain common sense will
work.
I'm not offering any specific suggestions or advice
on the Niagra Falls / Electromet issue, because I have no knowledge of that
situation other than what I've heard on Radsafe. I'm also not offering my
opionion on whether there is too much or too little environmental monitoring
going on.
My gripe is with self-designated saviors that
crusade their cause under a "public health" banner, but want to keep real
information about exposures, causal relationships, disease incidence rates,
etc. out of the picture, because then the public would know that the
primary goal of these groups is not public health at all, it's shutting
down an industry that they (the crusaders) don't like. Anyone truly
interested in improving public health seeks, rather than avoids, facts and
experts.
Vincent King
Grand Junction, CO
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 |