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From: ken@argus.UUCP (Kenneth Ng)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.sci
Subject: Re: life of nuclear wastes
Message-ID: <371@argus.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 21-Jul-86 21:25:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: argus.371
Posted: Mon Jul 21 21:25:32 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 22-Jul-86 18:01:23 EDT
References: <333@argus.UUCP> <523@gargoyle.UUCP> <2201@ihlpg.UUCP>
Organization: NJ Inst of Tech., Newark NJ
Lines: 39
Xref: lsuc net.politics:6910 net.sci:1056

In article <2201@ihlpg.UUCP>, tan@ihlpg.UUCP (Bill Tanenbaum) writes:
> > [Kenneth Ng]
> > >When inhaled, plutonium is more dangerous: 1300 milligrams to cause
> > >cancer.  
> -----
> > [Richard Carnes] 
> > The figure I have read in various places is that < 1 *microgram* of
> > Pu is sufficient to cause cancer if inhaled.  It is less toxic if it
> > is not lodged in lungs or absorbed into bloodstream.  Something is
> > amiss if published estimates differ by 6 or 7 orders of magnitude.
> -----
> I suspect we have an apples and oranges comparison.  In principle,
> 1 ATOM of a radioactive substance is sufficient to cause cancer, albeit
> with a low probability.  Such statistics as that are meaningless for
> comparison.  Some standard is needed, such as the amount of a substance
> inhaled that gives the inhalee a 50% chance of developing cancer within
> five years, or some such standard.  Without this, pro and anti nuclear
> authors will use wildly divergent figures to back up their own biases.

Gee that sounds familiar, remember a couple weeks ago I posted some
values for various substances with the LD50 values?

> Bill Tanenbaum - AT&T Bell Labs - Naperville IL  ihnp4!ihlpg!tan

-- 
Kenneth Ng:
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