Re: Cost of Radiation Exposure

[Harald Weiss <weiss@ki.comcity.de>]

Bill and Ron,

the described practice wasnīt meant to be a monetarization of life. It
was just a comparison of a life lost due to radiation damage being
equally precious as a life lost due to a conventional accident. And
while itīs infinitely complicated to calculate the risks of a procedure
involving construction work, mining, mashine work, transport etc., it
can be derived relatively easy from statistics on accidents in industry
etc. for what sum of money invested in industrial goods one fatal
accident has to be expected. This amounted to round about that 1 billion
DM I mentioned in the correction to my original posting. On the other
hand we used a thumb value of 1 % cancer risk per 100 rem, and so one
fatality per 10,000 rem, based on a LNT model. Equaling the fatalities
results in that often criticised value of 100,000 DM/rem. For me itīs
clearly immoral to sacrifice more people for a measure than one hopes to
save with this same measure.

Disclaimer as before and greetings from the baltic sea,

Harald

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


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