malapropism hall-of-fame

[Les Slaback <lester.slaback@nist.gov>]

I offer the following candidate to the RADSAFE Hall-of-Fame of attempts to dumb-down a technical non-issue for the public .....

Background:  The Washington Post (a week or so ago) reported that the Navy had found 38 new cooking pots contaminated with Co-60.

The nomination: "The 60-quart pots were so mildly contaminated that one official said it would take round-the-clock, hands-on contact for 446 years for the pots to produce a worrisome level of radioactivity in humans."

Keeping in mind that what is printed is not necessarily what was said one wonders ....
How was the 5 yr half-life factored into this 446 yr assessment?
What is the migration coefficient for the radioactivity to move from the iron in the pots into the hands?
And what is the accepted activity or dose criteria for 'worrisome'?



Disclaimer:  the above are the personal musings of the author, and do not represent any past, present, or future position of NIST, the U.S. government, or anyone else who might think that they are in a position of authority.
Lester Slaback, Jr.  [Lester.Slaback@NIST.GOV]
NBSR Health Physics
Center for Neutron Research
NIST
Gaithersburg, MD  20899
301 975-5810