Posted on 05/25/2002 11:29:18 AM PDT by backhoe
"There are examples of how the NCI report seems to downplay the seriousness of the situation. The average estimated cumulative exposure to every U.S. resident from fallout from U.S. tests is estimated to be two rads (defined as 100 ergs of energy deposited in one g of tissue; 100 rads' one Gray). Instead of comparing this fallout dose of two rads to every U.S. resident with the average dose Americans would have received if there had been no atmospheric nuclear explosions, a mere 0.1 rad a year from cosmic radiation and naturally-occurring background radiation, the NCI repeatedly compares the two-rad dose to the 200 to 300 rads produced by an I-131 diagnostic scan in the 1950s, or to a dosage of 0.4 to 4 rads from such a scan today. Such scan exposures were experienced by a relative handful of people, not the average U.S. citizen. It is entirely inappropriate to compare a diagnostic medical procedure, performed to help sick patients, with atmospheric nuclear tests that were indiscriminate in their effects and designed to help no one. These NCI tactics simply obscure the fact that the radiation exposures due to fallout from atmospheric testing were an order of magnitude greater than the background radiation to which all of us are exposed."
"This is not the only purposeful distortion: all exposures in the summaries are given as average dose among all residents in a given county. But buried in the text is the nugget that exposures for children under five were three to seven times the average, since almost all exposure was from ingested milk (cows eat contaminated feed, and concentrate the I-131 in milk). Some children drink much more milk than average, so they could be getting, say, nine to 21 times the average exposure; and some farm children drink unprocessed, fresher milk, so they could be ingesting far more of the short-lived isotope I-131, which has a half-life of eight days, than those getting milk processed commercially. Finally, a few may be drinking goat's milk, with much higher concentrations of I-131 than cow's milk. In other words, the use of average intake is both meaningless and misleading. In the five western counties which received an "average" exposure of 12 to 16 rads, small children had at best three times that intake, and possibly 25 times as much or more."
-Shane
Radioactive iodine can not only travel hundreds of miles on the winds, but also still remain health threatening even as other radioisotopes are becoming dispersed and diluted along with it and their likelyhood of causing harm diminishes. It is often overlooked that while there will also be many other dangerous radioisotopes released along with radioiodine, if they are inhaled or ingested they are normally dispersed throughout a body and pose less of a risk than if they were to be concentrated into one small specific area of the body, like radioiodine is in the thyroid gland. As a plume or cloud of radioactive isotopes disperses with the wind its danger also diminshes, but always much less quickly so for radioiodine because whatever little there is that's inhaled will always be concentrated into that small space of the thyroid gland.
NUREG-1633 points out an increase in thyroid cancer caused by radioiodine from Chernobyl...
"...was detected in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. Notably, this increase, seen in areas more than 150 miles (300 km) from the site, continues to this day and primarily affects children who were 0-14 years old at the time of the accident...the vast majority of the thyroid cancers were diagnosed among those living more than 50 km (31 miles) from the site."
The updated (1999) World Health Organization (WHO) Guidelines for Iodine Prophylaxis following Nuclear Accidents states in its abstract regarding thyroid cancer caused by the Chernobyl disaster:
"This increase in incidence has been documented up to 500 km from the accident site."
...and therefore...
"...that stockpiling (KI or KIO3) is warranted, when feasible, over much wider areas than normally encompassed by emergency planning zones, and that the opportunity for voluntary purchase be part of national plans."
Also, regarding the treatability of thyroid cancer and thus implying it's perhaps not that big a deal, if that's what you had meant to suggest, the 1000 who die from it every year here in the USA might not share your view.
Bottom Line: Ingested or inhaled radioactive iodine (radioiodine) persists in the body and concentrates in the thyroid. (Excess iodine in the blood, either radioiodine or stable iodine, is quickly eliminated from the body, but only after the thyroid has become saturated with one or the other type of iodine.) Even very small amounts of radioactive iodine, because it is retained in the small space of the thyroid, eventually will give such a large radiation dose to thyroid cells there that abnormalities are likely to result. These would include loss of thyroid function, nodules in the thyroid, or thyroid cancer. The most likely to see the worst effects, in later life, are the youngest children. (Many of the Chernobyl thyroid cancers appearing in the former Soviet Union among young people today were just children less than five years old at the time of the accident. Experts now contend that as high as 40% of the nodules are cancerous with 5 to 10 percent of the cancers fatal.)
Every year researchers are discovering more from Chernobyl as its legacy continues to reveal itself. According to the World Health Organization, that disaster will cause 50,000 new cases of thyroid cancer among young people living in the areas most affected by the nuclear disaster. Researchers have also found that in certain parts of Belarus, for example, 36.4 per cent of children, who were under the age of four at the time of the accident, can expect to develop thyroid cancer.
No other radioactive isotope expelled from Chernobyl is racking up anywhere near these numbers well away from ground zero.
Yes, Potassium Iodide (KI) and Potassium Iodate (KIO3) only protect you from one of many isotopes that'll be released, but for less than 25 cents for a daily dose, that's pretty cheap insurance for the one expected to cause the greatest number of casualties downwind and well away from ground zero, IMO.
-Shane
I believe it understates the severity of the issue, which taken even at face value was already bad enough with the NCI's 'worst case' estimate is that fallout from nuclear weapons testing likely generated from 10,000 to 75,000 cases of thyroid cancer!
Nuclear War Escalation Ladder [Free Republic]
SonnaGun! I see you were the poster!
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