Professor Gerry Thomas explains radiation health risks
A friend whose Twitter handle is @ActinideAge just posted a link to Gerry Thomas Highlights Misconceptions over Health Impacts of Nuclear Accidents. (Embedded below.)
Even though it was published in November 2014 on the UN University YouTube channel, it had received a grand total of 189 views at the time I visited on April 6, 2015.
It’s more than a little ironic that a reasonably well-produced video from a large international organization featuring one of the world’s experts on radiation communicating the risks of radiation has received so little promotion that virtually no one has watched it.
Please share this with as many people as you can; let’s see if grassroots efforts can help the UN actually spread this important message.
Update: (April 6, 2015 1200) After seeing a tweet related to the above post, another follower shared a link to a more in depth discussion of communicating radiation health effects Gerry Thomas & Andrew Sherry: “Nuclear Risk Communication Four Years After Fukushima”.
The audience for the above talk is the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan; they had about 45 minutes for questions and answers.
Now that I’ve posted this page, which includes the video, on some 20 different Youtube sites, there will be a few more viewers. I’ll post on more sites as time and inclination move me.
Please don’t misunderstand; these videos are good, very good, but as evidenced by the YouTube comments (and in most comments of pro-nuke vids) a one-way lecture vid has trouble knocking down follow-up lies and FUD which many other readers tend to go along with due sans counterpoints and feedback. For me what’s more effective are actual dynamic video roundtable debates where truth faces FUD for all sides to see that’d likely cover all the retorts and facts missed by other one-way lecturing videos. It behooves nuclear blogs and nuclear professional sites to occasionally announce challenges to anti-nukers to participate in YouTube debates to debunk FUD spewers face to face on the fly.
James Greenidge
Queens NY
@ James G
It need not be an either or decision. All avenues of instruction can and should be taken advantage of. Access to Youtube comments is NOT limited to anti-nukes; we can play too and our tools and equipment are so much better.
Debates are great, but hopefully the participants on the pro-nuclear side really ARE pro-nuclear and engaged in presenting the nuclear case, unlike the one featured here in Atomic Insights against Gundersen where one individual on the pro-nuke side was focused on global warming.
I’d love to know more about Professor Thomas’s conversations with Fukushima locals. Her brief mention of talking to a midwife was very indicative. Having lived with several midwives over the years, I know that these professional women are a trusted source of information for mothers and other women. When mothers no longer feel terrorised by an easily measurable yet biologically ineffective form of environmental contamination, then we know the expert wisdom is really cutting through the stale narrative of fear.
The Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan is anyway a good avenue to spread information, as they are the journalists who will be at the source of most reports about the current situation in Japan. They unfortunately have received all sorts already and are probably quite confused about who’s telling them the truth.
Gawd she’s good. I love hearing from Gerry, she does great work on both the science and the outreach.
I loved this. I only wish she came back around to the claim that the earthquakes caused significant damage to the reactors (from a safety perspective). That piece of mis-information was never addressed.
I just read a story in yesterday’s (April 6, 2015) paper (by John Tozzi, Bloomberg News) that is headlined: “Can anything kill the deadly bacteria on endoscopes?”
The answer/question that came to me immediately: “How about proximity to Cesium-137 for an hour or so?”
Then I read the story (about one third of a page long story) — and absolutely NO mention of decontamination with radiation.
Often radiation and health is limited to radiation CAUSING cancer and radiation KILLING cancer — while the potential for radiation to kill pathogens seems to be largely ignored.
She is wonderful…..thank you
I have started viewing this video several times but stopped in the first segment because she kept implying that the JapGov got it right with their eveacuation. They did NOT. They did in fact take all measures to minimize the risk from radiation, but at a cost of killing about 1700 people due to the measures taken.
We REALLY need to learn these lessons and implement the IAEA guidelines for emergency response. If Japan had, their eventual level of public cancer mortality MIGHT have gone up a bit from ZERO (hormesis suggests not), but the 1700 people dead from their panicked evacuation would still be alive.
I would love to see her rerecord that first bit while including the relative risk situation because the rest of the segments are really quite marvelous!
@kiteman
Stay tuned to the Atomic Show.