Re:The Petkau Effec

["John Moulder" <jmoulder@post.its.mcw.edu>]

> Petkau's work is often trotted out by Ernest Sternglass and his 
> devotees to "prove" that low-level radiation is far more damaging than 
> is believed. 
> Sternglass, referring to Petkau said in a May, 1974 NY Times op piece 
> that "these studies now explain the earlier findings of surprisingly 
> large health effects on human and animal populations exposed to low 
> levels of fallout as an indirect chemical effect of radiation on 
> cell membranes rather than in terms of direct action to the genes in 
> a nucleus of a cell".

For a discussion of Petkau's work and Sternglass' "interpretation" of it, see 
pages 463-469 of the BEIR III report (that's the 1980 US National Academy of 
Science report on low level non-ionizing radiation, not the current one).

> I have all this info on Petkau because someone here tried to use the 
> same research against us.

Same here.  Sternglass is still using this argument.

> I wonder what Petkau himself has to say 
> about how his work has been used in the least 20 years.

I haven't seen anything from Petkau since a 1988 paper in IJRB.  Anyone know 
whether Dr Petkau is still around?



John Moulder (jmoulder@its.mcw.edu)