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approximately three and one-half Rathers. Thus, in the seven years since the accident, Dan Rather and CBS Evening News have have imposed on the public twice the radiation exposure received from the entire Three Mile Island event.
The 100 million viewers who watch television about four hours each day receive some 50 Rathers yearly. That's 50 000 rem. Thus, the assumption of one cancer per 10 000 rem predicts that television viewing causes five cancers a year in the U.S. Perhaps when a guest on Ted Koppel's Nightline complained about turning gray after Three Mile Island, Koppel should have suggested she blame television rather than nuclear power. Of course, in less contentious times, she might even have blamed normal aging.
Should one offer sympathy to the citizens of Denver? Naturally occuring low-level radiation is all around us, coming from minerals in the ground and cosmic rays from outer space. But in the Denver metro area, because of its high altitude and high mineral content, 1.8 million people receive about twice the natural radiation dose that is received on the average elsewhere in the U.S. Indeed, Denverites EACH YEAR receive an extra 120 Rathers! My gosh, that's over thirty times more than from Three Mile Island. Not only that, the extra radiation received by a Denverite each year is more than would have been received by a person standing at the highest radiation place at Three Mile Island during the entire accident. In two years a Denverite receives extra radiation about equal to the maximum from Chernobyl anywhere outside of Russia.
Before starting the evacuation of Denver, perhaps we should note the surprising fact that Dennverites are less prone to cancer than the average American. Indeed, a study by Argonne Natioanl Laboratory found that people in the U.S. living in high radiation background areas have, in general, lower cancer rates than those in low radiation areas. Maybe those who take mineral baths, which usually have elevated radioactivity levels, are on to something. At the very least, those who pray on the radioactive cobblestones in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican (three times higher radiation level than Denver), or pass the radioactive pillars in Grand Central Station, or experience the thirty-fold increased radiation in a jet airplane should feel at ease -- at least when there is no turbulence.
The examples above involve large numbers of people receiving radiation exposures below 1 rem. For larger doses consider the accident at a French nuclear facility a few weeks after Chernobyl. As the television and print media duly reported, five workers received radiation exposures. One worker received 17 rem and the others less. To put this dose in perspective, I queried a number of radiological experts as to whether they would rather get a broken arm or a 17 rem radiation exposure. Not one took the broken arm. Yet, broken arms don't seem to make the news.
To sum up, we note that high levels of nuclear radiation such as are present in certain areas whithin nuclear plants and at medical and industrial x-ray facilities should be avoided. As a matter of prudence, it is wise to avoid any unnecessary exposure. But at inadvertent exposures of a few rem, and at natural background levels which are a tenth or two-tenths of a rem per year, the effects -- whether harmful, beneficial, or absent -- are so insignificant that they are masked by normal variations in health.
Thus, one should be wary about the meaning and intent of predications of thousands of future cancer deaths from Chernobyl radiation in western Europe, where individual doses were a fraction of those received yearly in Denver. Similarly, predictions of many thousands of future cancer deaths in Russia, as reported in the media, are derived from the exposure of 75 million Russians to levels of radiation comparable to than in Denver. Such meaningless figures add nothing to the understanding of the tragic events at Chernobyl.
And this brings us back to the question about Dan Rather. Is he more dangerous than Three Mile Island? Clearly, the question being addressed isn't really about Dan Rather, and it isn't about actual radiation exposure. Neither Three Mile Island nor the combined radiation output of Rather, Jennings, Brokaw, and the rest of CBS, ABC, and NBC will produce any measureable public health effects.
The concern is not radiation but rather a public unable to objectively make vital decisions on matters involving radiation. We who are professionally involved with radiation have clearly done a poor job in communicating. But the communication experts in both the print and the broadcasting media have also failed in adequately informing the public about radiation. We must all do a better job in the future, for it should be clear that a misinformed American public is infinitely more dangerous than all the radiation we received from Three Mile Island and Chernobyl put together.
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