Re: One pound of Plutonium

["Otto G. Raabe" <ograabe@ucdavis.edu>]

At 04:07 PM 3/21/98 -0600, Jesse Coleman wrote:
>RADSAFERS,
>
>FGR 13 says that the risk factor (cancer mortality) for inhalation
>of type S, Pu 239, with an AMAD of 1 micron is 8.45 E-07 per Bq.
>With a half life of 24065 years, I calculate a specific activity
>of 2.3E+9Bq/g, using equation 4.29 in Cember's 3rd edition.  This
>gives a cancer mortality of 1.9 E+3 per gram or 880 thousand per
>pound.  That means that one pound of Pu-239 contains enough activity
>to cause "only" 880 thousand fatal cancers, a far cry from the about
>4.5 thousand million people on earth.  Inhalation pathway, etc, etc.
>

March 23, 1998
Davis, CA

Dear Jesse and all:

There is no truth to ANY risk factor in FGR 13. Your use of FGR 13 in your
calculation makes totally invalid the result that you got. I have
previously estimated that there is an effective threshold for
radiation-induced lung cancer from plutonium at about 1 Gy lifetime dose
(HPJ 57, Suppl 1, 419-432, 1989). The Russians found that no one with
lifetime lung doses below 0.8 Gy developed radiation-induced lung cancer
(HPJ, Dec. 1997). FGR 13 will never give you a correct answer since the
whole document is based on an imaginary linear risk relationships that have
no basis in reality.

Otto
		*****************************************************
		Prof. Otto G. Raabe, Ph.D., CHP
                [President, Health Physics Society, 1997-1998]
		Institute of Toxicology & Environmental Health (ITEH)
		     (Street address: Old Davis Road)
		University of California, Davis, CA 95616
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