Opinion on Marples-Miller OpEd Piece

["PAUL E RUHTER" <RUH@inel.gov>]

Supervisor, Radiation Dosimetry & Records
User ID-RUH; Mail Stop-4147;  Ext. 6-1973
I will second the comments of Barbara Hamrick and Keith Welch, even if
they were not made in the form of a Motion!!!

Paul Ruhter ruh@inel.gov

*** Reply to note of 04/26/96 17:21

From: welch
To: RADSAFE --INELMAIL RADSAFE

Subject: Opinion on Marples-Miller OpEd Piece
I can't help it, I have to get this off my chest........

>Barbara L. Hamrick wrote:
>

>>This was the most dishonest, uneducated, paranoid piece of drivel I have read
>>in some time.  Where is this or was this printed?  I would like to know who
>>to contact to combat this fanatic propaganda.  Where did John Dudley Miller
>>get his nuclear engineering degree?  From a matchbook cover?
>>
>>As always, this is my personal opinion,

Larisa Streeter then wrote:
>And this was one of the most worthless "opinions" cum critiques I have ever
>read.

>If there are inaccuracies in the facts presented in the abovementioned
>*OpEd* piece, I personally, as a Radsafe reader but not a radiation expert,
>would very much appreciate it and would find it useful to know WHAT those
>inaccuracies are and what the CORRECT information is. I don't know John
>Miller, but I do know Dr. Marples, who is one of the world's authorities
>on the Chornobyl incident (not a radiation expert), and I know he is
>interested in facts, not propaganda.
>
>Generalized "this is drivel" comments are, IMO, totally worthless and
>mean-spirited.
>

Larisa,
I am curious as to the nature of "Western Atlas International Inc."  What
kind of business is it?  Is this a risk consulting (I hope not) or other
occupational health related firm??

I happen to agree with the general opinion of Barbara Hamrick, and although
I'm not an "expert", I will venture to point out a few of the areas that
most of us HP types have problems with when they show up in print.

(1)
>Several prestigious publications have recently made an absurd claim:
>Radiation from the Chernobyl accident 10 years ago did little harm to
>human health.

This is not an absurd claim or view, it is a relatively true general
statement, based on factual data.  Publications such as the New York Times
are not considered "prestigious" in terms of scientific accuracy, but I
would still tend to agree with the general statement.  One does have to
qualify what is meant by "little" harm.  The "real" total of 42 deaths to
date (World Health Org. figures) can easily be considered small compared to
deaths attributed to any number of incidents, accidents, routine risks or
whatever you want to compare them to.  There have also apparently been a
small number (I think less than 10) of deaths due to thyroid cancer.
Current estimates are that about 500 children are effected by this desease.
The cure rate of this particular cancer is 90% to 95%. This would infer 25 -
50 eventual deaths in this group.  A tragedy for sure, but no holocost.

(2)
>But it is not fact.  The unseen hand behind all three articles is the
>international radiation health establishment.... people who aided
bombmakers, nuclear power plant owners and medical radiologists,
....strongly motivated to underestimate the health consequences of
radiation.  The truth might have put them out of business.

This is an opinion (i.e. drivel to most of us).  By the way, does anybody
out there in Radsafe land have a good estimate on how many lives have been
saved by the use of radiation in medicine - it's got to be at least 42.

(3)
>These agencies' "experts" told us in 1952 that a yearly dose equal to
>300 current chest x-rays was safe, but now they restrict us to one
>fifteenth that amount each year.

I don't see what's wrong with tightening the rules over a period of 40+ years.

(4)
>The United Nations and British committees agree with critics there is no
safe dose, no >matter how low, but the Americans refuse to believe it.

As far as I know the current practice in radiation protection is still ALARA
- based on the assumption that all radiation exposure carries with it some
risk, the risk being small with small doses.  To argue that a dose of 100
millirem caries the same risk as 100 rem is, well, drivel.  There are no
radiation protection "committees" that I know of anywhere making this
assertion.

(5)
>..... downwind residents still needed medical treatment... Radiation harmed
no one.

No report, official or otherwise ever stated that "radiation harmed no one".
This is more drivel.

The rest is about the same or worse.

Examples:
The noted Cambridge University specialist, Sir Dillwyn Williams, warns that
all children in contaminated regions are at high risk.

What is "high risk", and who is Sir Dillwyn Williams?

>Cleanup workers suffer from various health problems.  Most have skin,
>respiratory and digestive diseases. Their leukemia rate is double that of
>the whole population and rising.  Six thousand Ukrainian workers alone
>have died, many from heart attacks brought on by stress.

These are unsubstantiated statements.  There has been no link established
due to radiation in the lukemia rates in this area.  The number of six
thousand deaths I beleive is the total number of deaths in this workforce
population.  It doesn't mean anything by itself.  The article said there
were over 600,000 cleanup workers.  In ten years, one percent of them have
died.  So what. This is probably the normal death rate.  Twisting normal
numbers into something that sounds scary is drivel.

>  In contaminated zones visited last year, local farmers
>acknowledged they have been "lived off the land" since Chernobyl.  Most
>cannot afford to do otherwise.

These farmers have always "lived off the land".  They are very poor.

> In other cases mothers have been opted for abortions rather than families,
aware of widespread congenital defects.

The reason this is being done (if it really is) is because of the paranoia
and panic that has been spread through this type of drivel.  There have been
absolutely no data showing abnormal risks for "congenital defects" in this
population.

The rest of the article generally dealt with the sad state of affairs in the
Ukraine.  This part of the article tries to tie all of the problems of the
region to Chernobyl.  In so doing they somehow package up all these problems
in the context of "Radiation".  Remember the first statement in the article?
"Radiation from the Chernobyl accident 10 years ago did little harm to human
health"  Somehow the authors have connected all these problems in the
Ukraine to Chernobyl - hence connecting them to radiation, hence managing to
make the initial statement seem absurd - just as they asserted.

Marples and Miller are truly experts - in the misrepresentation of fact.

>David R. Marples is a professor and director of the Program on
>Contemporary Ukraine at the Canadian Institute ofUkrainian Studies,
>University of Alberta. He has authored three books on Chernobyl.  John
>Dudley Miller is a nuclear engineer, a social psychologist, and a science
>reporter and producer in Cleveland, Ohio.

If this is the standard behavior of science reporters and nuclear engineers,
and this behavior can be somehow accepted as  "professional", this poor
world is in a lot of trouble.

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This is of course my opinion, and I'll stick to it even if it's wrong.

Keith Welch
welch@cebaf.gov
Keith Welch
Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility
Newport News VA
welch@cebaf.gov