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RE: Article on radiation fear and disaster response.
Jaro's post:
> I re-posted the article on the Canadian nuclear listserv, and
> got an interesting - and I think quite valid - reply from a
> colleague (see below).
> Interesting reading. But I'm not sure if the statement "We
> don't treat other spills and leaks so fearfully" is
> necessarily true. Do you remember the media noise
> surrounding the transformer being moved in northern Ontario
> in 1985, the one that leaked PCB-laced oil?
and Maury's post of Bjorn's article:
> The warnings are from a research group that purposely during
> the past 20 years has consistently sounded the alarm about
> various hazards. This includes defoliants (Agent Orange) and
> lymph cancer, sweeteners and cancer, dioxins and cancer, blue
> cement houses and cancer, alcohol and cancer, breast feeding
> and cancer, electromagnetic fields and cancer, electrostatic
> fields and various illnesses and now, of course, the mobile
> telephone's radio waves and cancer. A review of warnings in
> the media show that the same research group has issued
> warnings more than 100 times about various matters.
...are thought provoking. Radiation is not unique in being associated
with emotional and sometimes not scientifically based treatment in the
public arena. Certainly some much higher risk exposures are treated as
"no big deal", such as routinely observed spills of hazardous chemicals
which cause evacuations of whole communities but no activist groups and
actors calling for industries to be shut down. Others, however, ranging
from those involving serious exposures and real harm, to low exposures
and tenuous or nonexistent causative mechanisms, generate emotional
reactions, and cue the involvement of some of these activists (Tennessee
has lost the uranium enrichment project due to public opposition - the
jobs go to New Mexico. Now we have Erin Brockovich and Johnnie Cochran
Jr. investigating groundwater contamination from a landfill in Dickson
County, TN and possible effects on drinking water and health in the
community). In some cases, the activists were right, and without their
voices, needed action (site cleanup and victim compensation) would not
have been taken. In others, the activists are at best wrong and at worst
practicing a mild form of terrorism for financial and political gain,
and their voices should be overridden by voices of reason. As noted "In
most cases, these warnings have later proven to lack any explicit
significance for health." I agree that "it is not ethically or morally
correct of ... researchers to release and issue warnings" in many of
these cases. Scaring people away from cell phone use, scaring parents
away from letting their children have needed CTs, scaring people away
from noninvasive nuclear medicine tests and towards more risky
procedures, and just leaving people in a constant state of fear about
cancer is unethical when no scientific basis exists for the claims.
Some sort of uniformity of treatment of these issues is of course
desirable, but an elusive goal. It would be an interesting research
project to look at the history of many of these cases and find some
grounds for a consistent policy on how public discourse should be
managed.
Mike
Michael G. Stabin, PhD, CHP
Assistant Professor of Radiology and Radiological Sciences
Department of Radiology and Radiological Sciences
Vanderbilt University
1161 21st Avenue South
Nashville, TN 37232-2675
Phone (615) 343-0068
Fax (615) 322-3764
Pager (615) 835-5153
e-mail michael.g.stabin@vanderbilt.edu
internet www.doseinfo-radar.com
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