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,

A quick look at your web page suggests you are not the statistician you wish you were. Your car accident analogy is flawed because the effects of Pu do not decrease with dose rate -- it's still cancers, leukemias and birth defects -- but for your analogy all the cars go harmlessly slow. Your ignorance of bioaccumulation effects is evident as you give it no mention. Your understanding of time is absurd because you think that just because people will get cancer eventually, some time in their lives, that we can give them cancer ourselves with our little science experiments whenever we want. You admit to a lack of good data on LLR yet proceed with your extremely conservative estimates of the dangers. And, you say that ingesting Pu is "relatively harmless" whatever that means -- certainly it's not what standard textbooks on the subject say -- they merely suggest that inhaling it is perhaps a hundred times worse. And lastly, you never differentiate between Pu 238 and Pu 239. It's all just "Pu" to you.

So clearly, your web page is lacking in reasonableness. Thanks for showing it to me. I know you say you encourage debate but we'll see. Have you got previous debates posted at your web site which I could look at? Or has no one else ever wasted their time with your absurd claims?

Russell Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA

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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