SI units and Food Irradiation

["Scott D. Kniffin" <Scott.D.Kniffin.1@gsfc.nasa.gov>]

My thanks to Roger Sawyer who pointed out that you can't begin a paragraph 
with a reserved word like "From", which I did.  So here is a corrected
version.
Sorry for all the inconvenience...I put the fire axe away.  

This is from the "Sometimes I hate it when I'm right" and 
"irony sucks" departments: 

I was handed a copy of "Alternative Medicine" magazine late Friday night that 
had an article on the "dangers" of food irradiation.  It had all the usual 
trash and gosh-these-sound-like-anti-pasteurization-arguments bunk, with just 
a hint of added paranoia!  My personal favorite was the picture of the 
(I think) Hiroshima mushroom cloud next to a picture of a table of raw T-bone
steaks.  The caption said something about the only people that would profit 
from this are nuclear POWER industry.  After I thought about that, it seemed
like it might not be such a bad idea if not for the bad PR it would
generate.  

The ironic part came later on that page.  There was a paragraph about how 
there is a move to change the units for lethal dose from 100,000 rads to 
kilogray to make the dose sound smaller.  

I do plan to write a response, the hard part will be keeping it under 25
pages.


In other news, I have a question I'd like to ask of the medsafe/medphys (?)
group regarding mercury toxicology and dental fillings but I don't really
want to subscribe seeing how about 100 messages a day is quite enough.  
Can anybody out there give me a hand here?  Thanks! 

Scott Kniffin

mailto:Scott.D.Kniffin.1@gsfc.nasa.gov
RSO, Unisys Corp. @ Lanham, MD
CHO, Radiation Effects Facility, GSFC, NASA, Greenbelt, MD

The opinions expressed here are my own.  They do not necessarily represent
the views of Unisys Corporation or NASA.  This information has not been
reviewed by my employer or supervisor.