To: Tim Steadham <tstead@ntirs.org>
From: "Russell D. Hoffman" <rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com>
Subject: Re: Can 1 pound of Pu cause cancer to the entire world?
In-Reply-To: <20010709152937.57703.qmail@web9106.mail.yahoo.com>
References:
Sir,
Since your email says you've managed to only figure about 12 people would die, I'll presume you've missed the part about the Pu being distributed directly to the people in that hypothetical, diabolical experiment, and not simply spread into the environment like it usually is.
If that assumption is not correct, let me know.
If spread into the environment, you still have bioaccumulation to deal with, and cancers caused by even minute amounts of Pu, which lodges in the body, for example in the bone. When vaporized by a NASA re-entry accident it is the perfect size for lodging permanently in the human body. It is undetectable once inside a human body. 12 deaths? I'll take a wild guess that you either work for NASA or a subcontractor, or used to. They seem to be the only ones that are capable of making such ridiculously low estimates.
Dr. John Gofman's estimates from NASA's previous accidents are many orders of magnitude higher than yours. And his credentials, should you care to look them up, are impeccable, both as a nuclear physicist and as a medical doctor.
Sincerely,
Russell Hoffman
>>> GOFMAN QUOTE: >>>>
"I am prepared to defend, before any scientific body, and under oath in full public view, my estimate that ONE MILLION people (perhaps only 500,000 or as many as two million) in the Northern Hemisphere have been irreversibly condemned to die of lung cancer from those 5 tons of plutonium. Indeed, were it not for the fact that by far MOST of the plutonium fell either upon the oceans or uninhabitable land, the figure of one million would be enormously larger." ("Irrevy" by J.W. Gofman, 1979, page 39.)
<<<< END OF GOFMAN QUOTE (first used in STOP CASSINI newsletter #32 August 25th, 1997) <<<<
At 08:29 AM 7/9/01 , you wrote:
The answer is a resounding NO. I thought I'd give you
my website where I totally discredit and rip apart
your claim that 1 pound of Pu could cause cancer to
the entire world.
In fact, by my analysis, the results would be maybe a
dozen or so people - if that.
You might want to stop embarrasing yourself by
claiming that 1 lb. of Pu could in any way have any
sort of impact on the world's population.
Regards,
Tim Steadham, P.E.
Visit http://www.ntirs.org and click on the link about
1 lb. of Pu.
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