RE: Cost of Radiation Exposure

["Weiner, Ruth" <rfweine@sandia.gov>]

A paper (Tengs, et al; Tanya Tengs is senior author) title "The Cost of 587
Life-Saving Interventions"  appeared in RISK ANALYSIS about 2 years ago.
This compares the cost of one year of life saved for various risk -averting
procedures.  Examples: vaccinations are a negative cost/year of life saved,
seat belts on school buses: $2800, EPA regulation of radioactive materials
$2.4 million, etc. (these numbers are from memory but are probably
order-of-magnitude right.

Clearly only my own opinion

Ruth F. Weiner, Ph. D.
Sandia National Laboratories 
MS 0718, POB 5800
Albuquerque, NM 87185-0718
505-844-4791; fax 505-844-0244
rfweine@sandia.gov


-----Original Message-----
From: Harald Weiss [mailto:weiss@ki.comcity.de]
Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 1999 12:30 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: Re: Cost of Radiation Exposure


JAMES MCEWEN schrieb:
> 
>         Can someone direct me to a source of information on the dollar
cost
>      (to society or a business)for an exposure of a man Rad.  General
>      information like "my company uses X dollars per man Rad" would be
nice
>      to know, but an official document would move things along a lot
>      better.
>

In an earlier life I used to balance the number of expected radiation
victims (laugh at it or donīt) against those of trivial working
accidents to be expected in the course of the protecting countermeasure.
Based on the statistics of the german social insurences you come to the
order of magnitude of 500,000 $ per man-rem as an adequate cost of a
dose-saving project, >if you take LNT as base of your calculation<.
Considering a threshold dose, hormetic effects or similar models
obviously lower the cost of a man-rem, depending on the dose-rate and
the dose per involved person.

Just my opinion, which not necessarily is that of my company or our
customers.

---
Harald Weiss (weiss@ki.comcity.de)
Preetzer Strasse 263, D-24147 Kiel
..

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

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