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To: marbren
One of the respondants at the Scientific American website very nicely stated one of my first objections to this piece:

10. kukuiawana

10:56 PM 6/21/11And what are the causes of these deaths? Acute death by radiation poisoning takes a huge dose, much larger than would reasonably have been expected given the distances involved. Lower doses can result in chronic problems (i.e. higher cancer rates) which will impact long term mortality, but it will obviously take a lot more time to see any impact on statistics.

Has anyone proposed a reasonable mechanism by which sub-acute radiation exposure can increase infant mortality?

The other issue is cause of death. A spike in deaths from all causes means what? Probably nothing; it certainly can't be pinned on the effect of a tiny radiation spike that is within natural variability (e.g., an airline passenger is exposed to more radiation than someone at sea level). A spike in deaths from a single cause may or may not mean anything. Mangano, one of the study authors, is an epidemiologist: he should have known that, because one of the biggest challenges of his profession is trying to establish whether a spike in the number of cases is due to a real cause, or due to a random clustering of cases.

Even if there is a real spike in deaths from a certain cause, and a strong correlation is shown between them and the earthquake--how do we know those deaths weren't caused by the paranoid reactions of parents doing weird things to try to "protect" their babies from the radiation? I notice that the cities chosen for the analysis are among the most liberal cities in the country; it's amazing some of the things whacky liberals will do, thinking they're doing something good.

13 posted on 06/22/2011 5:36:43 AM PDT by exDemMom (Now that I've finally accepted that I'm living a bad hair life, I'm more at peace with the world.)
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To: exDemMom

http://www.mass.gov/Eeohhs2/docs/dph/environmental/radiationcontrol/environmental_sampling_results.pdf

small spike in Massachusetts


17 posted on 06/22/2011 6:43:54 AM PDT by marbren
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