Buck:
The last sentence on 27.
“Because the amounts of radiation are
small in the Marshalls today scientists do not believe. ..”
How can you say
that it is small today?
Bair:
Maybe I should explain a little bit more of what we know about the
First, the only reason, the only way we know that
effects of radiation.
radiation can cause harm to people is because we have been able to study
populations like the Japanese and a couple of other populations
world that have been exposed to high doses of radiation.
in the
In those
populations we have seen some effects such as cancer.
Bair:
We also know from experiments that have been done with animals that
if you give them large amounts of radiation you can cause cancers, you can
cause birth defects.
Bair:
One other thing.
As I said before we have no evidence that if
people who live in the Marshall Islands and received radiation at the
levels that are there now that they would have any health effects, either
cancers, or genetic effects or birth defects.
the people would be harmed.
There is no evidence that
However, since we don’t know for sure we
believe that it is better to be safe and not let people go on to those
places because, --I like to equate radiation in a sense with cigarette
smoking.
We know that if people smoke a lot of cigarettes they will get
lung cancer or many of them will get lung cancer.
We don’t know how many
they have to actually smoke before they, we don’t know how many are safe;
how many cigarettes people can smoke before harm will occur.
much like radiation.
It is very
We don’t really know how much radiation people can
receive before they might increase the risk so that they would have some
harm such as cancer or birth defects.
So we believe that people should
minimize the amount of radiation that they receive.
too much?)
22
(To Alice:
Is that