ping
They should get their hearings (closed to public), they should get support and coverage for early detection and treatment... and relocation funds if the area is deemed a danger to future generations. A panel consisting of community leaders and government officials to decide, and generate a report, and recommendations.
It is the proper thing to do.
Recompense is due. It is the only honorable path.
[Asbestos suit DONNED. Sarcasm torpedo ARMED. FIRE!]
Given the recent news about the Beslan school massacre,
I suggest that we resume above-ground nuclear tests.
a) These tests *could* be performed on known terrorist
training sites, or in the Bekka Valley, etc.
b) We could also eliminate excess nukes from the
Russian stockpile in the same way. I bet they'd
be only too glad to help :-)
If they're anything like Chernobyl, there's little effect. If they're anything like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there's a health benefit in increased longevity and decreased incidence of disease.
However, the prevailing wind in the area of Idaho mentioned in the article is from the northwest, directly downstream from the Hanford nuclear reservation in the state of Washington.
We know that sometime in the '50s, Hanford released 5,000 curies of radioactive iodine "just to see what it would do." That stuff would have swept over the town of Emmett in Idaho, as well as my old home town of Weiser.
My mother died of thyroid cancer in 1988.
These people need to be treated fairly. However, the lack of knowledge is not one of their strong points. Every "kid" at the time knew of Strontium 90 and all the other crap.
I hate to put a crimp in the story, but anytime you're complaining about the negative effects of something that happened 50 years ago, those effects by definition couldn't have been too great.
(Or you wouldn't still be alive.)
A 1956 movie staring John Wayne was filmed in Utah, downwind from the NPG. One of the canyons they filmed the movie in was known to funnel the wind and dust into it. Many of the cast and crew later developed and died of cancer. The rate of cancer for a group of people in equal size was less than 1/2 the number that actually developed cancer.
The gentleman's plight is a sad one, BUT colon cancer is a major cause of cancer deaths in America and most of the sufferers weren't downwind of a nuclear test.
A committee of the academy is taking public comment for a study on nuclear fallout and public health to be submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services, said Bill Kearney, a spokesman for the academy. While many scientists and medical experts have said there is a connection between exposure to Iodine-131 and greater risk of thyroid disease and thyroid cancer, a link between the fallout and other diseases has not been established.
Still, in Emmett, dozens of residents have gathered in coffee shops and farmhouses to talk about cancer. Many furiously said they suspected their radiation exposure was connected to their cancers.
"This whole thing is wrong," said Richard Rynearson, 62, who is dying of colon and liver cancer, and who ran a heating and air-conditioning business until he became too sick to work. "Somebody needs to own up to the fact that they messed up."
Junk science alert.
Let's review the facts. The residents of this area got about 15 rads in the space of several years (some few may have been exposed to as much as 100 rads). A Rad is a unit of absorption, a Rem is a unit of exposure (a more accurate measure of how threatening the absorbed radiation is). The most dangerous radiation exposures tend to have 1 Rad = 1 Rem. We'll use that as our worst case scenario.
Short term exposures to radiation are the most dangerous, while long term exposure to low levels has no observably deleterious effect. Every American absorbs between .06 and .6 Rems of radiation per year just from his natural surroundings. Studies have shown that doses below 100 rems have no observable effect on cancer rates, and that doses as high as 300 rems are necessary to get significant (50%) cancer rates. So, what does this story tell us? Most exposures were far below the threshold for any effect at all, while a handful may have been exposed to the very lowest amount that might have an effect.
Second, epidemiology is a very strict science, and what we have is very anecdotal information in the story. Radioactive iodine causes mostly thyroid cancer, yet the residents blame many different varieties of cancer on the fallout. This is a perfect example of the post hoc, ergo propter hoc logical fallacy ("after this, therefore because of this"). Fact: nearly three in four Americans will get cancer of some kind and nearly one in four will die of it. Cancer is a disease of the elderly, and it is a natural function of the body's cellular systems breaking down and malfunctioning due to aging. Epidemiologists track disease and cancer threats based on quantifiable and measurable increases in effects. For example, when coupled with specific exposure to a known substance, higher rates of rare forms of cancer, cancer localized in patients (such as in the liver or thyroid), or cancer occuring at young ages all are valid indicators of a possible effect. But clusters of cancers occur in then population at random as well (that's what "random" means), so rigorous statistical methodology is necessary. Besides, someone has to be the person that gets the one-in-a-million cancer...
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PING!
That's just stupid. Power plants have nothing to do with weapons testing.