Re: Chicago Tribune Radiation Chart

[Bob Flood <bflood@SLAC.Stanford.EDU>]

At 11:36 AM 10/4/1999 -0500, you wrote:
>
>On October 1, a graphic appeared on the front page of the Chicago Tribune
>along with the story about the accident in Japan.  The graphic contains a
>chart purporting to show health effects from "Radiation exposure," and
>claims that 5,000 millirem of exposure per year is a "lethal dose," that
>exposure to 2,000 millirem per year brings the "onset of radiation
>sickness" and exposure to 1,000 millirem per year leads to "increased
>cancer risk."  The sources are claimed to be RERF, The Uranium Institute,
>UNSCEAR, and the EPA. The graphic credits David Constantine as the
>author/illustrator.

This graphic also appeared in a local newspaper in the eastern suburbs of
the San Francisco/Oakland, CA area. The most disturbing aspect of the
graphic in my opinion was the statement in the graphic that “a person
exposed to strong x-rays suffers cell damage and radiation sickness.” This
statement has the potential to scare a reader into refusing or avoiding a
medically necessary x-ray, which will, of course, have dramatically more
dire consequences for the reader than the radiation exposure from the x-ray
procedure. I sent a letter to the editor of the local paper explaining
this, but I've not received a reply yet.

===================================
Bob Flood
Dosimetry Group Leader
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
(650) 926-3793
bflood@slac.stanford.edu
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