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Comment by dfsegoat | Hacker News Reader

Couldn't agree more. Take Harold McCluskey [1] - "The Atomic Man" - who was involved with a pretty horrendous accident at Hanford, WA - and ended up with radioactive Americium-241 [2] embedded in his face/hands etc. - continuously irradiating him with a-particles.

You would think - "That's it for that guy"... Well, he ended up dying of pre-existing coronary artery disease - nothing to do with radiation or cancer, despite having massive amounts of radioactive material in his body, post-mortem.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_McCluskey

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americium-241

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Sample size of 1. That's like the smokers who tell stories of centenarian smokers to prove that tobacco is not all that dangerous.

No. It's a case study that shows that a worst case exposure to radioactive material is not a death sentence.

Are you familiar with the term "Case study" or "Case report"? It it is a medical/other study that follows a single individual over time. These are published daily in many medical journals.

Worst case? What? Those were alpha particles. You're lucky to get them through a postcard.

Which is precisely why you don't want them inside your body, every alpha particle emitted by the delay will hit and be absorbed inside you, it is the worst. That's why the Russian chose Polonium to kill Litvinenko.

There are alpha particles of different energies, and products of decay of emitters may well not be good for your health either. Polonium besides being acutely toxic itself, decays into lead for example.

Alpha particles cannot penetrate intact human skin. But they're extremely dangerous if they're already inside your skin.

I am familiar with case studies. A single case study is often a curiosity that might motivate someone to do a proper study, but not something from which you can conclude that having Americium in your body is not as dangerous as commonly claimed.

I don't know how you can classify that as "worst case exposure".

for more samples go to the villages in the 30 km zone around Chernobyl- few people refused to evacuate and still live there at the very old age. Though I doubt they were ever exposed to such high levels of radiation as mentioned in the parent.

The guy lived for ten years after the accident. He spent the first four or five years undergoing chelation therapy daily to remove the radioisotopes from his body tissues. At the time of his death, the dose model suggested he would have about a 12% chance of not having cancer. He didn't have cancer.

So, he rolled a 1 on an 8-sided die and didn't get cancer in that time. If he had lived longer, cancer would be a near certainty, though it still might not have been what killed him.

Cancer is caused by longevity. If you live long enough you will probably have cancer too.

Cancer is not caused by longevity. It's statistically more likely the longer you live. So your second sentence is true, but your first sentence is false.

But see eg the Demon Core https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core

or the Kramatorks accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accide...

Or the "radioactive gold" incident in NY State, when someone melted down gold radiotherapy seeds, and that's how the regional jewelry gold supply became contaminated. The government even issued public advisory posters, it was bad: https://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/hpposters/goldjewelry.ht...

You blatantly ignore the others who did in fact die from radiation exposure.. The case study you were referring to is not grounds for "radiation isn't all that bad.." It poses a significant risk, and since it can mutate/destroy DNA, I am willing to bet it did indeed play a part in at least the acceleration of the heart disease. You're body is a full system made up of very complex sub-systems, and each system influences the behavior of the others..

This argument is equivalent to "vaccines are bad because a soccer mom said their son died because of it."

You're statement of "its no big deal" implies you can just walk into Chernobyl and come out feeling great. If you think that is the case, you should visit the radioactive site and find out..

OK, simple question: would you be willing to get yourself contaminated with Americium-241 in the same way as the Atomic Man (for example, to proof how harmless a-particles in the body are, or, lets say for money)?

If not, what is the point of your contribution to the discussion?

This is a false dilemma. It is possible for something to be less deadly than people generally think, but still not safe enought that anyone would be accept unneccessary exposure to that thing.

Yes, exactly. And for a discussion about the pros and cons of Nuclear Energy the important factor is not, if it is less deadly than people generally think, but if it is safe enough that anyone (or at least a democratic majority) would accept the risks.

What is the point of a discussion with the topic "it is deadly, but not as deadly as people generally think, but still unacceptably deadly"? I don't get it.

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