Re: Atomic Reindeer (PBS TV program)

[Bjorn Sandstrom <sandstrom@ume.foa.se>]

Hello Radsafers and Mike (who wrote on the PBS TV program),

Interesting to hear that someone actually watched the program. It was our
lab who did the whole body counting. The country where this took place is
Sweden, but the village where the family lives is close to the Norwegian
border. 

I can tell you that Alan Alda declined to eat the reindeer meat he was
offered on the night before those whole body counting pictures were shot.
Yet on the transatlantic flight he had received a much higher radiation
dose than what would have been the result from that single reindeer
meat-meal. 

The little girl's total body content of Cs-137 was 1260 Bq (34 nCi), which
is high if you compare it with the average Swedish population, but low (as
in the context of the program) compared to her parents and other adult
Laplanders. 

At 10:12 1998-01-26 -0600, you wrote:
>Since we've been having a lot of talk regarding Atomic Animals, I would
like to bring to your attention a piece which ran on PBS last week on
January 21st.  
>
>PBS runs a show called "Scientific American Frontiers" which featured a
number of Nordic Sagas.  The primary piece among about 3 or 4 stories was
about the radioactive reindeer of Norway.  The host of the show is Alan
Alda and he visited a family who depend upon the reindeer harvest for their
livelihood.  They reiterated the Chornobyl accident and showed how the
plume traveled towards Norway.  They showed them roping the reindeer to
brand the new members and surveying the reindeer to see how radioactive
they were.  They also showed a large truck which periodically pulls up to
perform whole body surveys of the populace.  They counted Mr. Alda who made
a lot of typical nervous radiation quips and then assured him that he had
no trace of Cs-137.  They then surveyed a little girl who was born just
before Chernobyl and said they found some evidence of Cs-137 but that it
was very low.  The piece concluded that while radioactive contamination was
present, the effects were not as bad as was originally feared.
>
>I was cringing, waiting for the usual hyped conclusion, but was pleasantly
surprised by the balanced conclusion.  PBS has a short movie clip on their
web site at http://www.pbs.org/saf/1_season/1583_803mov.html.  Although, I
didn't have the right plugin to view it.


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