Hazards of Radiation

It is, of course, outrageous as you pointed out in your editorial “They Were Told There Was No Danger” (Oct. 1) that 500 uranium mine workers, an estimated 150,000 civilians living downwind of atomic bomb tests that were conducted during the 1950s and 1960s and the military personnel who were used as guinea pigs during those same tests were lied to by the U.S. government regarding the hazards of radiation.

It is important to note, though, that we are still being lied to by our government and the nuclear industry regarding the safety of nuclear power plants and the effects of low-level radiation. In “Nuclear Witnesses--Insiders Speak Out,” author Leslie J. Freeman interviews medical researcher Dr. Rosalie Bertell, medical physicist Dr. John W. Gofman and physicist Dr. Ernest J. Sternglass regarding their many years of research on the health effects of low-level radiation. All three researchers have concluded that there are no “safe” levels of radiation.

Yet, the nuclear industry continues to promote the use of radiation in food irradiation and medicine, nuclear reactors continue to vent radiation into the water and air, and consumer products containing small amounts of radioactive materials continue to be introduced.

Perhaps most insidious and outrageous of all is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission-approved plan to allow the nuclear industry to petition the NRC for permission to dispose of as much as one-third of its low-level radioactive waste as “below regulatory concern.” This radioactive waste could then be disposed of as regular garbage and sent to landfills, incinerators and even recycling plants instead of to a properly regulated nuclear-waste disposal site.

LARRY SIEGEL

Hawthorne