Re: Public Education

[JMUCKERHEIDE@delphi.com]

Tom,

>     Pat, your story about the "hot" firebrick, and the
>attendant convocation, hit home with me.  I, and I'm sure
>many others of you, have been involved in these civil
>defense/police/fire/eyewitness news "radiation
>emergencies."  The authorities' response and reaction to
>the "crisis," is yet another great argument for VIGOROUS
>public radiation education.
>     Maybe these particular folks are beyond hope, with
>hopelessly etched gray matter.  There IS hope, though,
>for the young.  That's why efforts such as the North
>Carolina HPS Chapter/ DOE Science Teacher Workshops
>are so important.  Science ignorance is a real threat, but
>it's a chain that can be broken.  Hey, a few of these fine
>kids will go into journalism!    ;-)

You are right, but you need to expand your finger pointing.
When the nuclear fuel accident in Springfield MA happened a couple of years
ago, I commented to our Emergency Management management personnel that this
was new fuel and the had no significant potential radiological public health
concern. Yet from the utility, contractors, public health agencies, vendor,
NRC, and the Nuclear Incident Advisory Team, everyone with a geiger counter,
including HPs, were spun up. 

Obviously, the political process took over, to the extent that there was a
great hue and cry about storing the fuel at Westover Airbase without proper
warning and notification of the surrounding towns. My input was not heeded,
and there may have been others knowledegeable, including HP professionals,
not heeded, but there were no HP professionals from universities or
elsewhere who publically advised that this was a grotesque over-reaction. A
comment that there was no immediate public health threat, while running to a
fire with geiger counter in hand, is not credible. 

And the HPs are responsible for training materials and training of most of
these radiation-trained emergency response personnel, which includes heavy
emphasis on all the techniques of protecting yourself and the public from
radiation, with negligible consideration of what levels are significant,
pushing ALARA and "any amount of radiation can kill", implicitly by our
response and over-reaction if not explicitly in words.

How do we create statements that can be applied to balancing the message,
and get them into the communications and training and responses to actual
incidents. I'd like to have prepared sheets of good info, based on solid HP
expertise, in my desk drawer to provide to any and all in discussing and
responding to radiation incidents. Any ideas?

Regards,

Jim M