Re: Atomic Reindeer (PBS TV program)

["Franz Schoenhofer" <schoenho@via.at>]

Schoenhofer
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A-1160 Wien
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e-mail: schoenho@via.at
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Bjorn Sandstrom <sandstrom@ume.foa.se>
An: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
Datum: Dienstag, 27. Jänner 1998 10:08
Betreff: Re: Atomic Reindeer (PBS TV program)


>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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Tack för informationen. Jag har mycket dalig samvete när det gäller Sr-90
bestämmelser.

Thank you for your information. I have a really bad conscious regarding my
promise to send you information about the Sr-90 determination method we
use......

Franz