Re: Hanford Site Cleanup Standards

[maury <maury@webtexas.com>]

This and related lines of discourse that are most offensive to me is the suggestion or implication that what was done decades ago, e.g., 1940-1960, needs or is even susceptible to "justification". I believe justification is completely irrelevant in the context of this discussion. There is a vast difference between the meaning and the tone of "justification" vs. "understanding". It seems to me that there is no justification taking place in these explanations because justification is neither needed nor appropriate. Understanding,  knowledge, and appropriate actions are in order. As Ruth and others have shown so well, there remain major, honest agreement problems relating to "appropriate actions". Body counts, for example, are not simply meaningless justifications -- a body

count is just one of many meaningful comparisons to help place events in perspective.



I believe that this and similar discussions would benefit by omitting the emotional overtones implied by concepts such as justification, guilt, and so on. Understanding how events evolved is important and constructive; justifications, repercussions, punishment, and guilt are usually trivial and almost always destructive.



Cheers,

Maury Siskel                maury@webtexas.com

_________

PP=PPP



========================================

RuthWeiner@AOL.COM wrote:



> I would like to see a response to the statement, made by me and others in various forms, that there has been no documented health effect among the non-worker public from radioactive contamination at Hanford.

>

> Also, here are analogies for the "that was then,this is now" idea:  forty years ago, carbon tetrachloride was sold under the trade name Carbona in grocery stores as a cleaning fluid, especially good on shoes.  Are cancer patients who used Carbona retrospectively demanding compensation from the manufacturers, because it was later found to be a potential carcinogen and taken off the market? Are people maimed in car accidents 30 or more years ago suing manufacturers because seat belts were not mandatory and air bags weren't made for passenger cars?  Half a century ago, DDT was available to spray with your Flit gun around your kitchen.  Are we demanding cleanup of municipal landfills to get rid of Flit containers (and what would we do with them anyway once we found them)?

>

> Closer to topic:  am I suing the dentist who, 60 years ago, x-rayed my teeth with slow x-ray film? the hospital, where I had my first hip surgery 25 years ago,  that took seven x-rays of my unshielded pelvic region in four days (now they do one)?

>

> You get the picture.  It is easy to beat up on the government and the defense facilities, especially since Watkins and O'Leary led the way in this effort, and that's why it is done.

>

> Ruth

> --

> Ruth F. Weiner

> ruthweiner@aol.com

> 505-856-5011

> (o)505-284-8406

>

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--

It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves under the flag,

and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to

burn the flag.                                  Charles M. Province





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