OK, I may have exaggerated, but when someone claims that generalised
medium-level radiation may be more beneficial than harmful to the
health, I pose extremely serious questions as to his credibility. I
admit that my response to your message was more an allergic reaction
against the name (which I have had for some years) than something I
looked up to provide data on his follies. IOW, the guy is supposedly a
leading world expert in radiation (and a dabbler in the environment),
yet he has always been a devil's advocate in several other fields of
science. Even in the field of his speciality, radiation, I understand
that he is not taken seriously by his peers.
I discussed his CO2 hypotheses with one of the scientists on a UNEP
Scientific Assessment Panel, who is also on the IPCC, and he explained
to me how he went off the tracks with his examination of ice cores. I
don't know all the details but basically it is true that clathrates will
lose their gas when disturbed at temperatures exceeding -30°C and that
there is a loss of much gas from the periphery of an ice core during the
extraction process and when cleavage occurs (frequently). However, he
makes three errors:
1. he assumes there are no gas bubbles in the ice and that all the gas
is sequestered as clathrates; this is not the case. There are many
minute bubbles of highly compressed dissolved air. As each gas forms
clathrates under different conditions of temperature and pressure, and
CO2 (and CH4) form them much more readily than O2 and N2, clathrate
analysis alone will yield higher levels of these gases
2. the analysis of gases are made from the centre of the uncleaved parts
of the core, where there has been no disturbance during the extraction.
3. if you take water from, e.g., a clean river or lake, and analyse the
dissolved air, you will find that it does not have the same proportions
as the air you breathe. It is richer in CO2 and O2 and poorer in N2,
simply because some gases are more water soluble than others. In fact,
CO2 forms ionic bonds with water, which is not the case with most of the
other gases in the atmosphere. It is therefore normal that CO2 analyses
yield higher levels if taken per se. However, the experts analyse the
levels of all the gases, not just the CO2, and deduce the CO2 level in
the air from known mathematical relationships from the levels of the gas
ratios of half-a-dozen different gases.
I'm not an expert in ice cores and I'm just relaying what I understood
from a 20 minute conversation with an expert of many years' experience
in atmospheric chemistry when I asked him a specific question about
Jaworowski's publications, so please don't shoot the messenger.
Brian
Chuck Dolci wrote:
> Brian Ellis stated:
> "Yeah! This is the guy who claims that Chernobyl caused no cancer deaths
> (there may have been 1) and that radiation actually reduces the
> incidence of cancer. I believe he is not taken too seriously."
>
> Brian - thanks for the pointer. It caused me to research this fellow. Your comment is interesting, but that is NOT what Jaworowski says.
>
> Jaworski says (at http://cnts.wpi.edu/RSH/Data_Docs/1-2/5/2/1/125213ja97.html)
> is
> "At the moment of the accident, there were about 470 people on the site of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant: 1) personnel on-duty (about 200 persons); 2) construction workers (about 250 persons); and 3) firemen on-duty and guards (about 20 persons). Among them, 134 (about one third) were diagnosed with acute radiation sickness (ARS) (Ilyin 1995). These ARC patients received high radiation doses, and 28 of them died in the first four months following the accident (Table 1). Deaths in 26 of these patients were associated with radiation skin lesions involving over 50% of the total body surface area. Two more patients died during the first days as a result of severe thermal burns and mechanical trauma. One further death was thought to have been due to coronary thrombosis. Thus, the total number of deaths due to early effects of the Chernobyl accident amounts to 31."
>
> "Over the last ten years 14 persons have died of the 106 ARS patients who survived the acute phase. These later deaths (due to car accident, lung gangrene, coronary heart disease, tuberculosis, thigh sarcoma etc.) are rather not attributable to radiation exposure (Wagemaker et al. 1996). However, follow-up of these patients needs to be assured for the forthcoming two or three decades, to distinguish between any radiation related diseases of these patients and confounding factors intrinsic to the population."
>
> He also points out (see http://www.world-nuclear.org/opinion/jaworowski.htm) that "In the asphalt paved streets of the "ghost town" of Pripyat [near Chernobyl], from which about 50 000 people were relocated, and where nobody can enter without special permission, the total external gamma dose rate measured by a Polish team in May 2001 was 0.9 mSv per year, i.e. the same as in Warsaw, and five times lower than at the Grand Central Station in New York."
>
> and
>
> "although I knew that on this first day of 'Chernobyl in Poland', the dose rate of external radiation penetrating our bodies reached 30 µR per hour, or 2.6 mSv per year, i.e. only by a factor of 3 higher than a day before. This dose rate was four times lower than I would experience visiting places in Norway, where the natural external radiation (up to 11.3 mSv/year) from the rocks is higher than over the Central European plane. It was also some 100 times lower than in an Iranian resort Ramsar, where the annual dose reaches about 250 mSv per year, or more than 300 times lower than at the Brazilian beaches (790 mSv per year) or in South-West France (up to 870 mSv per year). No adverse health effects have ever been reported among the people living in these areas with high natural background radiation."
>
> The theory of hormesis (i.e. that there are beneficial affects of exposure to low doses of radiation and toxics) has some interesting data to support it. Extensive studies of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, plus residents of an apartment building in Korea exposed to high levels of radiation plus the people in and around Chernobyl yield some interesting data. Isn't that the same theory on which vaccinces are believed to operate?
>
> Chuck Dolci
>
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>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Subject:
> Re: [LF] lead in humans
> From:
> Brian Ellis <[log in to unmask]>
> Date:
> Fri, 15 Apr 2005 19:10:59 +0300
> To:
> "(Leadfree Electronics Assembly Forum)" <[log in to unmask]>, Charles
> Dolci <[log in to unmask]>
>
> To:
> "(Leadfree Electronics Assembly Forum)" <[log in to unmask]>, Charles
> Dolci <[log in to unmask]>
>
>
> Yeah! This is the guy who claims that Chernobyl caused no cancer deaths
> (there may have been 1) and that radiation actually reduces the
> incidence of cancer. I believe he is not taken too seriously.
>
> Brian
>
> Charles Dolci wrote:
>
>> I haven't fully vetted this guy but I found an intersting article that
>> briefly talks about levels of lead in humans.
>> Check out http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/
>> Has anybody heard of this Prof. Zbigniew Jaworowski - Chairman,
>> Scientific Council of Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection
>> Warsaw, Poland
>>
>> Chuck Dolci
>>
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>>
>>
>
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