Re: Risk Calculation Analogies

[mgoldman@ucdavis.edu (Dr. Marvin Goldman)]

>>Date: Fri, 14 Jul 95 12:29:57 PST
>>From: "USHINO, TOSH" <ushinot@songs.sce.com>
>>Subject: Re: Risk Calculation Analogies
>
>>     I don't know if this is what you had in mind, but...
>>     Some years ago, I read someone compare extrapolating risk from low
>>     dose of radiation from high dose data in this manner:  Assume that a
>>     100 mph typhoon causes a $50,000 damage to a home.  Extrapolating
>from
>>     that, would it be reasonable to say that a 1 mph breeze could cause a
>>     $500 damage?
>
>Tosh,
>
>This is an interesting analogy.  Wouldn't wind damage be a threshold
>effect?
>(Do we have enough data to prove that it is?  :-)
>
>
>>     Tosh Ushino
>
>
>Noel D. Montgomery, Capt, USAF, BSC
>Health Physicist
>USAF Radioisotope Committee Secretariat
Reply:
How about this one.  If everyone on this planet were to put a one inch lift
in their shoes for just one year, every one would receive a small, one-year
increase in cosmic radiation dose.  Cosmic dose doubles for every 2000
meters in altitude.  Now if you multiply this collective dose by the
population of the planet and by the ICRP fatal cancer risk coeffiecient,
you find that in the next 49 years that the increased global dose has
caused about 1,500 additional cancer fatalities.  I use this example as the
furtherest extrapolation I know of of the mega-person, micro-dose problem.
This then opens up an interesting discourse which can then be related to
the real data data and can be done without use of any numbers to confuse
the listener, while sticking to the issue and separating the real from the
imagined.  Try it and let me know if it is useful.
mgoldman@ucdavis.edu