At 10:23 AM 8/15/2006, Ed Swynar wrote:
>John,
>
>I beg to differ in the matter of proximity near nuclear power plants...
Hi, Eddy,
I am not sure what you are disagreeing with. I think you missed my point.
I did NOT state that nuclear power plants do not cause cancer. I don't know
that one way or the other. What I did state is that any truly SCIENTIFIC test
is very hard to devise. And I see that Doc, KD4E, has already addressed some
of the issues such as poverty, ground water contamination, etc.
It is always safest to avoid things like nuclear power plants -- having just
watched a documentary on the aversion of a second explosion at Chernobyl
and how it took 800,000 people to seal the reactor. But many countries of
the world get the majority of their electrical power from nuclear power plants
without any significant problems of which I am aware.
>A few years back I lost a good friend --- 53 year old VE3NBE --- to a form
>of bone cancer. Ray lived right in the shadow of the Pickering nuclear power
>plant here in Ontario, Canada. His mother is still alive at 95, & his father
>passed away just before Ray did, at 96.
I am sorry you lost a good friend to cancer and it MAY have been due
to the nuclear power plant or it may not have been. My partner, the NSF
Program Director that I mentioned in my first posting, died of cancer at
age 53 and never lived near a nuclear power plant. So there appear to be
a lot of causes for cancer.
>Concurrent to Ray getting ill, two other similarly-aged males in the exact
>same block, who bought their homes at the same time, contracted the same
>form of cancer. A study that was conducted several years ago concluded that
>the rate of mis-carriages was significantly higher in that area, than in
>another immediately north.
While the apparent concentration is intriguing, there is nothing in this
anecdotal "evidence" that it was the power plant. Only that it MIGHT
have been related to the power plant. A good study would also look to
see if there were apparent concentrations of this same cancer in other
areas where there was no power plant -- as well as many other types of
statistical analyses. Not to make light of the loss of friends but maybe
there was a concentration of fast food restaurants in the area and the
apparent clustering was due to a poor diet. One of the more troubling
radiation hazards is a natural one -- that of radon gas. Some areas of
the country have pretty high concentrations and you cannot sell your
home without a radon test. In my case there was an issue with a home
I owned in the 1980s and I had to do some radon abatement before I
could sell the home. So, naturally occurring radon gas might account
for the apparent clustering.
>If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is a duck, in my books.
>Corporate agenda driven fraud is equally as fraudulent as any other kind.
>But don't let my unnscientific methodology discourage you from buying your
>retirement home next door to a nuclear plant near you, or discourage you
>from taking a dip in the warm, temperate waters adjacent to the plant's
>cooling towers!
I chose my retirement home to be well away from ALL civilization, power
lines, power plants, HDTV, BPL, etc. Twenty-five miles to the nearest
store and gas station. Forty miles away from the nearest real shopping.
But I still run a lot of risks out here, mainly car accidents (and motorcycle
accidents, since I ride) with deer and wild pigs. And if we ever start getting
any rain again, a real issue here is flash flooding. We seem to have a
death or two in the immediate area every year.
We all make our choices based on our beliefs and fears. But that doesn't
mean that there is a causal relationship between what we believe and what
we fear. Only a competent scientific study will suggest a relationship if
there is one.
73 John W0UN
_______________________________________________
RFI mailing list
RFI@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/rfi
|