Re: Ra, 25 mrem/y

[Neon John <johngd@bellsouth.net>]

Dan Burnstein wrote:
> 
> If I were to walk down a country road or through a city I would not like to
> receive 25mr or 250uSv, roughly the equivalent of a chest xray, without (1)
> knowing it was happening, and (2) accepting that risk and exposure for some
> benefit.
> 
> It maybe that I would be willing to undertake this burden for a benefit, but I
> would rather do it as an informed consumer than otherwise.
> 
> Dan B.
> npro1@ziplink.net
> 

OK.  As you walk down the road, tell me what other risks you've
considered and given your express consent to being exposed to.  How
many of the following might you have even thought about before I
listed them:

Overhead electrical wires (risk of electrocution, not EMF)
Underground electrical wires
Underground gas line
unknown toxic chemicals on the roadside
booby traps
vicious animals
poisonous snakes
poisonous insects
lethal disease bearing insects (lyme, yellow fever, malaria, etc)
escapees from the criminal loony bin
mugger
robber
drunk drivers
sleepy drivers
random bullet falling from the sky (kills a person or two every year
during the holidays)
a plane crashing on top of you
an errant military missile hitting you
a wall crashing down
objects dropped from windows above
building exploding
etc.

All the above kill people every year and thus the risk is many order
of magnitude greater than any environmental radiation exposure
you're likely to encounter, absent finding an errant source.  That
is true even if you accept the LNT fiction as fact.  Walk us through
your decision tree where you considered and explicitly accepted each
of the risks I enumerated above before you took your walk.  I submit
that if you regarded each of the above risks, accepted them and then
complain about the risk of environmental radiation exposure, you're
not competent to evaluate the relative risk.

This twisted mutilation of the libertarian philosophy that says that
every individual is an island unto himself is disgusting,
particularly to a libertarian such as myself.  When Adam walked in
the Garden, that was a viable philosophy.  But when Eve was created,
the risk of living became a shared one.

-- 
John De Armond
johngdSPAMNOT@bellsouth.net
http://neonjohn.4mg.com
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