Re: Bugs May Spread Radioactivity - this is new news?

[Melissa woo <m-woo@uiuc.edu>]

At 01:17 PM 10/8/98 -0500, you wrote:

>"Critter" releases of radioactive materials have been going on for some
>time.  One of the more interesting ones happened a few years ago in Oak
>Ridge when a frog was run over at the National Lab.  The pancaked frog was
>discovered to be radioactive and as a result, an official Radiation Safety
>Bulletin dated July 1991 was issued.  It read as follows:
>
>"CONTAMINATED FROGS

[the rest deleted for brevity]

As an example of how stories related to radiation get blown out of
proportion, the radioactive frogs are mentioned in _The Field Guide to
North American Monsters_ by W. Haden Blackman.  If I remember it correctly,
the writeup said that the offspring of the "Radioactive Frogs of Tennessee"
could grow to five feet in length and that some had become ferocious.

In the same book, there's a story about a woman who supposedly spent the
night in a drum that had contained toxic/radioactive materials and woke up
the next morning mutated into a fierce monster.

Ah... the American public and the popular press will believe anything bad
about radiation... at least stories like this provide interesting material
for my lectures on radiation safety.

--
Melissa Woo, Health Physicist			|<mailto:m-woo@uiuc.edu>
Div. of Environmental Health & Safety		|office	217.244-7233
101 S. Gregory St., MC-225, Urbana, IL 61801	|fax	217.244.6594
<www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/m-woo/>			|

************************************************************************
The RADSAFE Frequently Asked Questions list, archives and subscription
information can be accessed at http://www.ehs.uiuc.edu/~rad/radsafe.html