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From: ethan@utastro.UUCP (Ethan Vishniac)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.sci,net.bio
Subject: Re: Plutonium
Message-ID: <711@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 15-May-86 11:29:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: utastro.711
Posted: Thu May 15 11:29:28 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 18-May-86 11:53:41 EDT
References: <616@bu-cs.UUCP>
Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX
Lines: 32
Xref: linus net.politics:15192 net.sci:550 net.bio:327
Summary: correlations

In article <616@bu-cs.UUCP>, bzs@bu-cs.UUCP (Barry Shein) writes:
> 
> >From: ken@njitcccc.UUCP (Kenneth Ng)
> >If plutonium was as dangerous as you infered then we should
> >be all dead by now.
> 
> Maybe we are!...more seriously, isn't anyone else in this plutonium
> discussion at least mildly disturbed at the 10% increase in Cancer
> deaths over the last 20 years recently reported by the Harvard School
> of Public Health?
> 
> (again, to fend off the sophomoric, yes it was corrected for an older
> population and all that, it seems to have convinced most of the professional
> skeptics so far, the comments seem to be that if anything it may be worse
> as some known "cured" cancers weren't completely accounted for.)
> 
> None of us wants to believe it, but some of us are getting worried that
> the apparently inevitable result of our actions is slowly coming true.
> 
If the excess were correlated with the release of man-made radioactivity
then it would show a strong correlation with the local radioactivity.
This is how people have been able to show that some deaths in Utah
*were* caused by nuclear testing (at least statistically).  In general
the local cancer rates appear to be correlated strongly with the presence
of certain toxic chemicals in the environment.  Radiation may well be
the least of our problems.
-- 
"Ma, I've been to another      Ethan Vishniac
 planet!"                      {charm,ut-sally,ut-ngp,noao}!utastro!ethan
                               ethan@astro.UTEXAS.EDU
                               Department of Astronomy
                               University of Texas