Plutonium -Reply

[FRAMEP@ORAU.GOV]

Tommy Thomas requested "citable references - pro
and con " regarding the statement that Pu is the most hazardous
material known.

Pro: I don't believe that many people (aside from perhaps a few
newspaper reporters) have actually stated, in recent years, that Pu
is the most hazardous material known to man. 

Ralph Nader "The Menace of Atomic Energy" Norton 1975 states" "even
if there are other substances that are deadlier than plutonium they
do not make plutonium any less dangerous" "Plutonium is still a very
impressive cancer causing agent". In what I've seen, Nader seems to 
avoid stating that it is the most hazardous material.

Tamplin and Goffman make much of the hazards of Pu in "Population
Control through Nuclear Pollution" Nelson Hall 1970 but do not call
it the most deadly /toxic material known. 

The same is true in Goffmans "Radiation and Human Health" Pantheon
Books 1983 and other things of his I've looked at.

According to Stannards "Radioactivity and Health" PNL 1988 p 367 "the
statement [i.e. Pu was the most toxic material] was made during the
war years, perhaps in part to ensure support for the needed
protection measures, in part to secure full cooperation of the
workers and in part because the accumulating data were pointing in
that direction" Stannard calls this a considerable exageration.

Tamplin and Cochran "The Element of the Lord of Hell" New Scientist
May 29 1975 might come close.

Check newspaper accounts from the early to mid 1970s. This was when
Seaborg was talking about a "plutonium economy" - it was even
speculated that a plutonium standard would replace the gold standard.
This would therefore be the time the antis would generate a scare.

According to Jeff Wheelwrights "Atomic Overreaction" Atlantic Monthly
Apr 95 "To ensure that workers used respirators and followed safety
precautions, staff physicians warned that plutonium "was the most
toxic element known to man" .. necessary to hector or scare workers
into compliance" Wheelwright also qoutes a navy physician in 1946 to
that effect.

I'd suspect the phrase was widely used in the 40's to scare sailors
who were exposed to contamination from atomic weapons test fallout in
the Pacific. The sailors might be working on ships contaminated with
Plutonium after the short lived fission stuff had disappeared  - 
alpha survey instruments weren't real reliable/available. 

To track down the original source of the statement I'd ask old timers
like Stannard and Don Collins and hit references in Bart Hacker's
"The Dragons Tail" Univ. of Cal. Press 1987 esp the early safety
reports from Chicago and Los Alamos written by Robert Stone and Louis
Hemplemann.

Con:

Plenty of these have been listed but don't forget the HPS position
statement on plutonium.

And for pure entertainment value, nothing can touch the musings of
the late Petr Beckmann in his Newsletter "Access to Energy" eg ATE
June 88 "it is a poison but not a very potent one. [radsafe's own]
Prof. Bernard Cohen of the U. of Pittsburgh has offered to go on TV
with any nuclear critic and consume as much plutonium by weight as
his challenger consumes caffeine."

Bon apetit ;-)

Paul Frame
Professional Training Programs
Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education
framep@orau.gov