Re: DANGER: RADIOACTIVE RECYCLING ALERT

["Björn Cedervall" <bjorn_cedervall@hotmail.com>]

I had a few contacts with the Swedish media last year because a few of our 
green parliament politicians tried to make a big thing out of recycling low 
level waste (500 Bq/kg gamma irradiating nuclides are seen as 
non-radioactive background by our regulator). My approach was to make some 
simple assumptions regarding Bq content and then show where the dose levels 
would be. Part of the confusion that these people caused was regarding 
recycling and food cans and the question was "will our food be 
radioactive?". I calculated the dose obtained for a baby eating a can 
("conservative" assumption) containing some 5-10 Bq with Co-60. Something 
like that - just for the sake of academic discussion. The obtained life-time 
dose still became ridiculously low compared to the normal K-40 contribution. 
Part of the problem is whether the media will swallow these types of 
comparisons or other arguments: ours did but in one case the editoral page 
(major newspaper in Uppsala) said: "yes we want your article but we must 
wait three weeks before we can publish it" which happened to be 2-3 days 
after our political election here. Another newspaper choose to delete my 
title (relevant to the topic of course) - there was no problem with space.
bjorn_cedervall@hotmail.com


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