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?

Sir,

I have responded in [[[ triple brackets ]]] to your latest comments, below, and included an attachment:

Childhood-cancer survivors learn the cost of a cure.

Of course, it's about the "lucky" ones who survive.  Many don't.

Russell Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA

Note:
> are lines from my previous letter to you
the plain text is your current letter (uncut, of course)
[[[my responses are in triple brackets, like this -- rdh ]]]
Your third letter is also included, below.

At 09:51 AM 7/9/01 , you wrote:
> 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

The body can and does repair damage done to it if the
damage is done at a very small rate.  What is that
rate?  That depends on the insult to the body.  My
analagy (sic) is correct in that there is a different injury
rate depending on your speed - not just the hours
driven.  The ICRP data is analagous (sic) to only including
hours driven in that it does not give the statistics
based upon the dose received and the time period over
which that dose was received.

[[[   Yes, the body repairs some types of damage.  But you simply state that it repairs "the damage", which implies 100% success.  That 100% success is the equivalent of reducing the speed of the cars to a safe 1 mph.  DNA damage caused by free radicals, which are caused by plutonium in the body, is not always repaired, which apparently is what leads to cancer, leukemia, and birth defects.  This happens at all properly tested dose levels, which as I stated, ruins your silly analogy. -- rdh ]]]

The effects of ANY radiation ARE dependant upon dose
received.  Only a fool would say that a person who
receives a dose of 1 mREM has the same chance of
developing cancer as someone that receives 10000 mREM!
 Is that what you are saying?

[[[ That sure would be silly to say that.  What I said was that the type of damage doesn't change.  Let's say 1,000 people each receive a given number of Curies of plutonium -- enough so that, on average, one of those people will develop cancer.  Not a toothache -- cancer (leukemia, and birth defects as well.  Nasty stuff.  Much worse than your worst toothache.).  If the same number of Curies of the same isotope of plutonium (though the isotope doesn't really matter but let's not complicate things unnecessarily) is distributed among 10,000 people (evenly or unevenly, it doesn't matter), then statistically, still, one (and only one, statistically) will get cancer.  Obviously if one person gets the entire dose, that person's chances of getting cancer would be extremely high.  And obviously, in any one group of 10,000 people, it is possible that none would get cancer, while in other groups of 10,000 people, multiple cancers would develop.  It's not easy to study the effects, as direct experiments are diabolical.  As you said, sometimes the body can repair damage.  That's already included in the math.  -- rdh ]]]

You DO realize that radiation is all around you and,
on average, you receive 200-300 mREM/year.  Whether
you receive the dose from an external source, or an
internal source, if the doses are the same - so are
the effects.

[[[ And you DO realize that billions of people will die of cancer in the next few decades?  And you do realize that a large portion of the so-called background radiation is and will remain external to our bodies (thanks to the largest organ "in" our bodies, our skin, which is conveniently already dead on the top layers, and thanks to our hair, which is likewise not a contributor to the DNA chain)?  The background radiation level needed to subside greatly before advanced lifeforms could exist.  And here, at last, after billions of years, are advanced lifeforms which need to be protected from further random mutations as much as possible.  This is true even when genetic defects exist, because the chance of a beneficial mutation is vanishingly small.  Do you think women who carry the (potentially deadly) gene for hemophilia would consider random mutation in an effort to protect their unborn sons?  Humans are now (with the obvious exceptions of you and me) extremely advanced lifeforms in no known need of change (you are an exception for your strange beliefs about nuclear dangers, I am one for wasting my time debating you).

Radiation is the antithesis of genetic progress.  It randomly destroys our DNA for no good reason -- so that NASA can have a science experiment or so that military fools, nearly all now long dead, could play with big, big bombs that made big noises and were absolutely mesmerizing to look at (as is the nuclear blue you love and display at your web page).  Every living human has plutonium in their bodies from NASA and from above-ground weapons testing.  Some will die from that radiation.  Others will die from other forms of carcinogenic pollution, including the background radiation you consider irrelevant and which the nuclear industry you support adds to daily.  And just because some of us will die from natural radiation, that is no reason to condemn still others to that fate, as you are so willing to do.

You denounce Dr. Caldicott as being knowledgeable about "baby food and chicken pox".  According to your web page, you graduated in the early 1990s, so I would not be surprised if Dr. Caldicott has studied radiation dangers longer than you have been alive.  In fact her studies, and her Harvard education, and her teaching experience at Harvard after she graduated, went well beyond such matters as "baby food and chicken pox", and she is probably a lot closer to being right about this issue than you are.  Many people disagree with Dr. Caldicott's calculations that a pound of plutonium is sufficient to kill "everyone on Earth".  But to think that it would take 250,000 TONS - which is what your figures calculate out to -- is crazy math, off by many, many orders of magnitude.  (I get 250,000 tons from your calculations, because if it takes a pound to kill 12 people, which is what you said would be all that would die from a pound distributed in its entirety to everyone, then 6 billion divided by 12 is 250,000 tons.  There are actually probably closer to 6.2 Billion right now, but who's counting?  It's all just numbers to you.  It's real lives to me, people I knew and loved who died of cancer or leukemia -- caused in large part by the environmental atrocities you encourage. -- rdh ]]]

> 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

Bioaccumulation plays no role in our hypothetical
situation where people line up and get their share of
the Pu. 

[[[ Well, duh.  It has to do with the real world, which is where you've ignored it. -- rdh ]]]

After all, it is stated time and time again
that 1 pound of Pu EQUALLY DISTRIBUTED among the
entire world's population would be sufficient to give
each person cancer.  This is totally ludicrous as my
calcs demonstrate.

[[[ According to standard toxicological textbooks such as Toxics A to Z, "even with the lower risk estimate, less than a milligram suffices" and a few micrograms suffices at the higher dose estimate.  So which estimate is right?  Toxics A to Z addresses that too: "In such a uncertain situation, it is tempting for those not polarized on the issue [as you clearly are -- rdh] to assume that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.  But this may not be the case:  the true risk may actually be one of the other of the extreme views." (Harte, Holdren, Schneider, Shirley, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1991).

A lethal dose of few micrograms means there are at least a couple of hundred million lethal doses in a pound of weapons-grade plutonium.  So if the pound of plutonium were evenly divided, everyone would get between a tenth and a twentieth of a lethal dose.  But weapons-grade Pu is mostly Pu 239 of course.  Pu 238 is about 280 times more radioactive (for proportionately less time) so a pound of Pu 238 divided amongst everyone on Earth is enough to kill us all many, many times over.  And, even using a dose of "less than a milligram," a pound of Pu 238 would kill more than 100 million people if it was distributed to everyone on Earth:

Assume 1 milligram of Pu:
X 280 to convert from the radioactivity of a Pu 239 to the radioactivity of Pu 238 (the effect lasts for less time, generations instead of eons)
X1000 to convert from milligrams to grams
X 453 to convert from grams to a pound
= 126,840,000 million people dead from one pound of Pu 238.

At the "less than a milligram dose", after converting from Pu 239 to Pu 238, you could kill us each about 50 times over with a pound of Pu 238.

And of course you can reuse plutonium:  In real life it doesn't just kill once.  Survivors of the first round can be fed the same Pu that killed their neighbors.

How you came up with only 12 dead is quite a mystery. -- rdh ]]]

And I do not think that it is acceptable to give
someone cancer becuase (sic) they probably will get it
anyway.  I clearly state that I do not beleive (sic) that.
What I do state is that if the cancer rate approcaes (sic)
25% of the population, and our statistics show a rate
of 0.022% then our calcs are WELL within the
statistical error of the normal cancer rate. 

[[[ To use such a grotesque calculation to absolve the Nuclear Industry of guilt is tantamount to murder.  We are not discussing "statistical error" here, but rather what the facts really are.  I admit it's hard to calculate.  That doesn't mean it isn't happening. -- rdh ]]]

In other
words, how can we definitively say that people will
get cancer from the Pu when the standard sampling
error of the data used to gather "normal" cancer rates
and the Pu-induced cancer rates are overlapping by
such a wide margin?

[[[ It would clearly amaze you to know that there are ways to study low dose rates and their effects.  No credible authority would deny that Pu is a virulent cause of cancer, leukemia and birth defects.  Dr. John Gofman has done a variety of low-dose-rate calculations using fairly standardized dose rates given to large populations, in the form of medical x-rays.  The results of those types of studies are compelling and the methodology goes a long way to solving the problem of sampling errors in other statistical methods you obviously are relying on. -- rdh ]]]

> whenever we want.  You admit to a lack of good data
> on LLR yet proceed with
> your extremely conservative estimates of the
> dangers.

[[[ Have you ever heard of The Precautionary Principle?  It is entirely appropriate to proceed with conservative estimates of the dangers in light of a lack of good data pointing otherwise. -- rdh ]]]

  And, you say that
> ingesting Pu is "relatively harmless" whatever that
> means -- certainly it's
> not what standard textbooks on the subject say --

The dose rate is a function of the mode of intake.  If
you ingest an alpha emitter, the lining of your GI
tract will tend to shield your intestines and body
from the radiation.  After all, the q factor for
inhalation is 0.2 but only 2.4E-5 if ingested!

[[[ You equate some amount of "shielding" by your stomach and intestinal lining with a complete lead-lined stomach wall.  That's absurd.  A large portion of Pu is permanently absorbed by the body whether ingested or inhaled, although inhalation is admittedly much worse. -- rdh ]]]

I sugest (sic) you read your textbooks again or peruse the
ICRP literature for these figures.  Heck, even your
hero, Mr. Sternglass states that inhalation is
thousands of times worse than ingestion (look on YOUR
website for your interview with him... *smile*)

[[[ Both are bad, and inhalation is hundreds of times worse, maybe a thousand times worse.  And it's Dr. Sternglass, not "Mr." Sternglass.  (Dr. Ernest J. Sternglass, Radiological Physicist, University Of Pittsburgh School Of Medicine).  In addition to his relevant credentials here, he also developed some radiation detection equipment NASA uses pretty regularly, as I recall hearing. -- rdh ]]]

> 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.

Download the pdf file (its small) in it I make the
distinction of what I am calling Pu - its the average
quantity of weapons grade Pu and this includes 239,
240, 241, and a small (very small) quantity of Am-241.
 I mean, after all, the popular theme of "1 pound of
Pu can kill everyone" doesn't differentiate between
isotopes - but I did :)

[[[ Cassini had 72.3 pounds of mostly Pu 238 dioxide aboard, but I believe Dr. Caldicott's statement referred to "weapons-grade" plutonium, which is good enough for doing sample calculations.  I haven't downloaded your pdf (the link didn't work, for one thing, and, based on the enormous number of misspellings in your letter to me, it's obvious you don't check your work or pay sufficient attention to detail, so why should I?), but (above) I already figured out some ramifications of your "only 12 would die" bottom line -- namely that at that rate it would take 250,000 tons of plutonium to wipe us all out, and that's feeding it directly to each of us.  Where you made your mistake in your calculation is your business, but it's clear from this discussion that a mistake has been made on your part somewhere.  Twelve people?  Even if Dr. Caldicott is off by an order of magnitude or two (which I doubt), you are off by six or eight orders of magnitude, and possibly more. -- rdh ]]]
 
> 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

It is not lacking in reasonableness, as I have
addressed each and every one of your statements and
described how just a few minutes worth of perusing
that page would have answered your questions. 

[[[ I did peruse your page, and found it to be full of logical fallacies.  You have reiterated many of those irrationalities here.  (Thank you for taking the time to rephrase and restate them.)  I hope you've seen that I'm answering them as directly as possible in the hope it will do you (or someone else who reads these "debates") some good. -- rdh ]]]

Sadly,
I guess you did not want to (or have the capacity to)
digest the information I provided and deduce my
assumptions. 

[[[ I think I got the gist down pretty well.  You are arguing about whether one pound could kill everyone, and manage to come up with the incredible flight-of-fancy calculation that it would only kill 12 people.  You also point out that there are millions of cancers already, as if to say "what's a few more?".  Well, Sir:  Each one matters.  My brother's death at age 39 from complications following leukemia was just one death, but it mattered to me and to the rest of his family.  Each death matters.  Not whether you can bury those deaths in a statistical river of deaths.

I deduce that you are probably off by about 6 to 8 orders of magnitude, maybe more.   One doesn't generally need to look at the details when the basic presumptions are wrong, but I've spent some time with you because, unlike most such webmasters and writers, you claim you want debate. -- rdh ]]]

Maybe I need to spell it out more
clearer for the intellectually challenged people that
will inevitably surf on in.

[[ Oh, please, please do!  After all, if you explain your position carefully enough, and simply enough, then sooner or later even you might see the fallacies in your logic!  However, so far you have denied a lot of known facts and twisted a bunch of others, and arrived at nonsense though your journey.  I wish you well. -- rdh ]]]

As to the debates, none have posted any - I just
started the page a week or so ago so not many people
have had the opportunity to view it.  Many of the
"times visited" were me going to the site to work on
it and check it out but I have had a couple dozen hits
from people other than myself.

[[[ I've researched these issues carefully.  I've interviewed all of the scientists I've mentioned, by phone, email, letter, and/or in person.  I've also talked to dozens of other scientists, and hundreds of activists, and read dozens of books, including articles in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, and thousands of other articles, and debated hundreds before you, and I've published those debates.  If you believe in what you say, and mean what you say about being willing to debate the subject, we are just getting started.  -- rdh ]]]

By all means, fel (sic) free to start one if you wish...just
don't embarras (sic) yourself with any questions that have
already been addressed on my page!

[[[ I'm not worried about embarrassing myself, except in so far as responding to your foolishness might be seen as a worthless waste of time. -- rdh ]]]

Regards,
Tim Steadham, P.E.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

[[[ Sincerely,

Russell Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA -- rdh ]]]

================================================================

>>>>> Childhood-cancer survivors learn the cost of a cure: >>>>>

http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com:80/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=kidcance08&date=20010708
 ...
Copyright © 2001 The Seattle Times Company


Nation & World : Sunday, July 08, 2001

Childhood-cancer survivors learn the cost of a cure


By Susan FitzGerald
Knight Ridder Newspapers

PHILADELPHIA - Barbara Lee was 15 the first time she was diagnosed with cancer.

She had been sitting in class one day when a friend noticed a bulge in her upper left arm. It turned out to be a type of bone tumor called Ewing's sarcoma.

The cancer can be a tough one to beat, but Lee was lucky and fared well with a regimen of chemotherapy and radiation therapy. By 17, the ordeal was behind her and she was on with life - college, a nursing career, marriage, a baby.

Lee was 37 the second time she was diagnosed with cancer. This time it was breast cancer.

"I'm more scared this time around because the stakes are higher: Now I'm 37 and a mother and a wife," recalled Lee, 41, who grew up in Wilmington, Del., and now lives in Montclair, Va.

As it happened, the radiation treatment that Lee got the first time around probably led to her second cancer.

One of medicine's biggest success stories has been the conquering of many childhood cancers.

More than 250,000 children, teens and adults in the United States have survived cancer, and today nearly 75 percent of children can expect to beat their disease, up from 25 percent 30 years ago.

But now some survivors are beginning to see the delayed effects of the very treatments that cured them.

Because chemotherapy drugs and radiation target rapidly dividing cells, the treatments can have a particularly harsh effect on growing bodies. The damage can lead to second cancers, heart and kidney abnormalities, stunted or asymmetrical growth, infertility and the diminishing of IQ.

A price to pay

"The good news is that more and more kids are being cured, being treated successfully; and the bad news is there can be a price to pay for that," said Anne Kazak, director of psychology at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, who studies cancer survivors.

And the price isn't just physical; there are psychological after-effects.

Kazak and a team of researchers reported in a recent study that three out of every four children who beat cancer experienced some symptoms of post-traumatic stress later in life - anxiety, nightmares and sleep problems - not unlike those experienced by veterans of war.

Kazak has heard former cancer patients say that a smell or sight triggered a flashback so intense that "all of a sudden, I was right back there getting treatment again."

Lee had lived with a nagging fear that her bone cancer might recur someday, but finding a lump in her breast came as a shock.

The tumor was in her left breast - part of the chest area that had been irradiated during her bone cancer treatment more than two decades earlier.

"It was devastating," Lee said, though after a mastectomy and chemotherapy she is cancer-free again.

Researchers are gaining insights into the late effects of childhood-cancer treatment because so many more are living into adulthood. Today, the odds of beating common childhood cancers such as acute lymphoblastic leukemia and Hodgkin's disease are especially good.

"The cure rate for many types of childhood cancer (has) increased remarkably," said Malcolm Smith, an oncologist who oversees pediatric research at the National Cancer Institute.

"The question is `At what cost have these higher cure rates been achieved?' The only way to get the answer is to look down the road 10 to 15 years."

Study of 13,000 survivors

Much of the new information is coming from a continuing study, which has involved more than 13,000 people in the United States and Canada who were under the age of 21 when they were diagnosed with cancer between 1970 and 1986, and who survived at least five years.

In tracking what happened since then, researchers identified 314 second cancers in 298 individuals - six times more than you would expect to see in the general population.

Breast cancer, thyroid cancer and malignant brain tumors were the most common second cancers to turn up.

Most likely to develop a second cancer were those who had childhood Hodgkin's disease - women got breast cancer from the chest radiation they received.

Joseph Neglia, a pediatric oncologist and epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota Cancer Center, an investigator for the childhood-cancer-survivor study, said the results indicate that 3 percent of childhood-cancer survivors will develop a second cancer within 20 years.

While the risk is still relatively small, Neglia said, it points to the need for vigilance.

"One of the things we're trying to do is raise the awareness of patients and raise the awareness of the doctors," said Neglia.

For instance, women who received radiation in the chest area as part of their cancer treatment should get regular mammograms starting in their 20s, he said. [[[ this adds to their cancer risk, and an alternative method of early detection should be found. -- rdh ]]] Former cancer patients should also watch for signs of thyroid cancer.

Lisa Haffner, 26, a nurse who lives in central Philadelphia, developed a bone cancer called osteosarcoma nine years after being treated for a different bone cancer, Ewing's sarcoma.

The second cancer was in her right leg, in the area where, as a 10-year-old, she got radiation for the first tumor.

She became suspicious that something was again wrong when she was a university sophomore and felt pain doing aerobics.

"The tumor was getting bigger and bigger and it cut off circulation at the bottom of my leg, and I had a lot of pain," said Haffner, who works in the cancer unit at Children's Hospital. Haffner had to get her right leg amputated and now gets around on crutches.

Seven years later, even a passing twinge can cause worry: "If I have something different, it always crosses your mind, `What if?' "

Current treatments modified

The experience of childhood-cancer survivors has changed the way children today are treated, said Anna Meadows, a pediatric oncologist at Children's Hospital who has long studied the after-effects of cancer treatment.

Doctors now know, for instance, that a class of chemotherapy drugs called anthracyclines can cause heart damage. When the drug is used, doctors add another medication that helps protect the heart.

And attention is paid to the psychological fallout from dealing with cancer.

The challenge in cancer treatment is finding the balance between potential payoff and risk, Smith said. With curing patients as the goal, "it's very hard to get a risk-free treatment," he said.

Wendy Hobbie, a nurse practitioner in Children's Hospital's follow-up program for cancer patients, said families understandably always say "just save my child."

Even so, she said more attention is being given to discussing the possible after-effects of treatment. For one, teen boys on certain chemotherapy drugs may be asked whether they want to bank sperm in case their cancer treatment affects their fertility.

Erika Wilson, 23, of Delaware County, Pa., knows well the after-effects of cancer treatment. She has ringing in her ears, hearing loss, dry mouth and acid reflux, resulting from the chemotherapy and radiation she received at age 15 for a tumor behind her nose.

At a recent checkup, Hobbie reminded Wilson that they needed to keep a close watch on her thyroid for signs of a second cancer and check her urine for possible kidney problems.

Wilson, who is the office manager for the Daily Pennsylvanian and is busy planning her wedding, said later that she sometimes worries about getting cancer again, though "it's not this big boogeyman in the closet."

In some ways, she said, her cancer ordeal made her stronger: "You get over cancer, you can do anything."

Copyright © 2001 The Seattle Times Company

==================================================================

>>>>> Tim Steadham's original letter to Russell Hoffman: >>>>>

==================================================================

Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 08:29:37 -0700 (PDT)
From: Tim Steadham <tstead@ntirs.org>
Subject: Can 1 pound of Pu cause cancer to the entire world?
To: kgrossman@hamptons.com, rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com

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 (sic) 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.

==============================================================
>>>>> Tim Steadham's additional letter to RDH, July 9th, 2001 (in which he backtracks on some of his statements made or implied in the letter I answered, and makes the same essential fallacy that "one cannot intelligently say that one pound pf Pu would affect the world's cancer rate even if everyone lined up and recieived their share of the Pu"): >>>>>

At 09:30 AM 7/9/01 , Tim Steadham wrote:
Russell,

I do not, never have, nor never will work for NASA or
anyone that has anything to do with NASA.  i am just
sick of people making such ridiculous claims that one
pound of Pu could kill the entire world.  I am a
nuclear engiener (sic) that is currently working for a pump
manufacturer designing pumps for power plants (both
nuclear and (the vast majority actually) non-nuclear).

I neither doubt nor do i state that Pu is not nasty
stuff that has the potential to do some damage.  What
I do argue is that nobody with any common sense could
ever claim with a stright (sic) face that 1 pound of Pu
could ever, ever cause 6.2 billion people (the
estimate by the US census Bureau of the world pop at
4:35 PM, July 3, 2001) to contract cancer.

On my website, I have a link to the pdf file with my
calculations clearly noted.  In my discussion, I
assume that we line up every single man, woman, and
child in a line and give them their fair and equal
share of the 1 pound of weapons-grade Pu and that Pu
STAYS in their body.

I gave the dose received over the course of one year
from inhalation, ingestion, and injection.  I used
straightforward calcs to come up with dose.

Then I performed a second calc and used ICRP data on
the dose received from exposure (inhalation, actually)
from Pu.  Using the ICRP data, I concluded that 1.2
million people would sttistically (sic) contract some form
of cancer as a result of their exposure to their share
of Pu.

I go on to say that this figure, although
statistically correct with the LIMITED information
available to us today, is not realistically correct
because the ICRP data assmes (sic) a large acute dose and
does not differentiate in probabilities depending on
the dose RATE - only the total dose received.

Finally, I show that this dose is only 0.1% of the
normal cancer rate and is therefore well within the
statistival (sic) deviation of normal cancer rates.
Therefore, one cannot intelligently say that one pound
of Pu would affect the world's cancer rate even if
everyone lined up and received their share of the Pu -
which would never happen.

Also, most of the exploded Pu would normally fall in
the ocean since it accounts for over 3/4's of the
surface area of the Earth...

It is interesting to note that he says .5-2 million
people have received lung cancer due to 10000 pounds
being aerosolized....that is a far cry from 6 billion
people receiving lung cancer from 1 pound of Pu :)

Best Regards,
Tim Steadham, P.E.
Nuclear Engineer


--- "Russell D. Hoffman"
<rhoffman@animatedsoftware.com> wrote:
> 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.
> >
> >__________________________________________________
> >Do You Yahoo!?
> >Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
> >http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/
>
>
> *************************************************
> ** THE ANIMATED SOFTWARE COMPANY
> ** Russell D. Hoffman, Owner and Chief Programmer
> ** Visit the world's most eclectic web site:
> ** http://www.animatedsoftware.com
> *************************************************
>


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