Re: AW: Hanford Site cleanup standards

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

This may be a little off topic, but I think we should distinguish carefully between environmental impacts and human health impacts.  Like all the large DOE sites (and many DOD sites) Hanford provides very good habitat for native species of both plants and animals; it is an arid lands ecology park and study site. The reason for this is that the major adverse impact on the natural envirnment is human activity itself, and much of Hanford gets little or no human activity.  The animals and plants at Hanford are protected from people.  The radioactive contaminants have essentially no effect on the Hanford ecology.



Human health effects are another matter, although I know of no actual documented cases of a member of the public (not a Hanford worker) suffering any adverse effect from radioactive contaminatioon at Hanford.  There have been dose reconstructions, from which one can postulate health effects (especially when using the LNT) but the only documented ones that I know about are occupational, not public. 



Ruth

-- 

Ruth F. Weiner

ruthweiner@aol.com

505-856-5011

(o)505-284-8406



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