From: mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: _Trashing_the_Planet_ by Dixy Lee Ray
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 92 00:42:12 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)

[This book review is copyright 1992 Mark Thorson, and is not for
publication in newspapers, newsletters, journals, or magazines.
All other uses are permitted.]

I just finished reading Dixy Lee Ray's book _Trashing_the_Planet_
(Regnery Gateway, 1990) in which she exposes a number of popular
myths, such as dioxin, the greenhouse effect, ozone depletion, acid
rain, asbestos, nuclear waste, etc.  The basic premise of the book is
that the environmental movement is composed of honest fools and
clever liars, the latter with a leftist, anti-capitalistic ax to grind.

The case is presented well, with extensive references.  The author
is a marine biologist by training, who later entered politics
eventually holding office as governor of Washington state and
chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission.

I've found a few small items which I'm having a bit of difficulty
understanding, and I hope the net can help clear them up for me.

For starters (quoting from page 4):

"Note that the 1.5 parts per trillion of dioxin were dispersed among
the nine flounder, and that the test included the internal organs,
which nobody ever eats, and the skin, which nobody ever eats.  If
there were a misleading way of making a test and laying it out for
the public to see, there it is.
    On the basis of a trivial 1.5 parts per trillion--not per flounder but
in the total of nine flounder mashed up together, guts and all--the
EPA proposed a national program to examine the aqueous
environment around every pulp mill in the country!  Well, that's
one way to keep a job going and to keep spending public money.
    On whose basis did the EPA rely to decide that one ninth of 1.5
parts per trillion was a sufficient risk to human health to undertake
an expensive and extensive nationwide program?"

My problem here is simple math.  I had though ppt was a
proportion, like a percentage.  If you took 9 flounder which had, say,
10% fat each and blended it together, would the resulting mix be 90%
fat?

Quoting from page 16, in which Gov. Ray is talking about when she
was a child in the 1920's:

"Telephones existed but no satellite communications, no word
processors, no calculators, no computers, no electronics.  Business
machines consisted of a hand-cranked 'adding machine' and a
manual typewriter.  There were no plastics, no ceramics, no
prestressed concrete structures, and no synthetic fibers."

Isn't an 'adding machine' a calculator?  Weren't the vacuum tubes
used for telephones and radio considered to be electronics?  If there
were no plastics, what were the silent movies recorded on?  If there
were no ceramics, what did they use to make flowerpots and
teacups?

Quoting from page 24:

"It is worth repeating:  Electricity is the cleanest, safest, cheapest,
and most flexible form of energy yet known, but it is not perfect,
and it is dangerous."

I had always thought that electricity was made from one of several
other forms of energy, and that there was inevitably a certain loss
of energy in the conversion process.  Wouldn't that mean the other
forms of energy are cheaper than electricity, otherwise you would
be losing money by operating an electric power plant?

Quoting from page 42:

"It [electricity] can also be used to split water and obtain hydrogen,
which has great potential as a clean fuel for transportation.  Its
'burning' only produces water vapor."

Oh yeah?  I heard that when you burn hydrogen in an internal
combustion engine using air as the oxidizer, some of the nitrogen
in the air combines with the oxygen to produce nitrous oxides.
I must have been disinformed.

Quoting from page 43:

"When ice floats, as in the Arctic ocean, it already displaces
approximately the same amount of water that would result if it
were to melt.  (There would be some slight thermal expansion.)"

If it expands when it melts, then wouldn't it get smaller when it
freezes?  If the latter were true, then why do pipes burst in the
winter when water freezes inside them?

Quoting from page 96, where DLR is in turn quoting from Walter
Marshall (former head of the U.K. equivalent of the AEC):

"In my own country, the United Kingdom, I like to point out that
the average Englishman's garden occupies one tenth of an acre.
By digging down one metre, we can extract six kilograms of thorium,
two kilograms of uranium, and 7,000 kilograms of potassium, all
of them radioactive."

Is that really true?  I had thought uranium was a lot more rare than
that.  If it's really that common, I think we're going to have a hard
time stopping people from making their own atom bombs.  I'm a bit
tempted to make one myself :-)

Quoting from page 107:

"First, there was the tragic accident at the Chernobyl plant in Russia.
_Outside_ the evacuation zone, the radiation exposure to Soviet
citizens was equivalent to the exposure New England citizens get
_every_year_ from living in their radon-rich homes for about eight
months."  [emphasis in original]

I've heard about serious "hot spots" outside the evacuation zone,
such as in Byelorus, which is far outside the evacuation zone.  I
suppose she might be comparing the _average_ Soviet citizen to
the people living in the _worst_ radon homes in Pennsylvania.  BTW,
Chernobyl is not in Russia;  it's in the Ukraine near Kiev.

Quoting from page 113:

"Nothing has been more decisive of made a more lasting impact [in
medicine] than the application of nuclear knowledge in medical
diagnosis and therapy."

If you talk strictly about nuclear medicine, I would say antibiotics,
genetics, microscopy, and germ theory had greater impact for longer
time.  If you include X-rays under "nuclear knowledge", I would say
that at least germ theory has had greater impact for longer time.

Quoting from page 116:

"Advances in the understanding of antibodies have lead to another
approach, one that utilizes a selected radionuclide and attaches it to
a monoclonal antibody that will seek out and lodge in the targeted
area, where the isotope can effectively deliver its radiation.  This
procedure has great value, because the monoclonal antibodies can
'home in' on the affected area, no matter how small it might be.  The
body can therefore be swept clean of small metastases;  this is not
possible with surgery or with any other known technique."

This is really nit-picking, but I had thought monoclonal antibodies
can also be attached to non-nuclear cellular poisons, thus achieving
the same effect without using radiation.

On page 121, she refers to the radionuclide used in ionization smoke
detectors as americium-243.  I had always thought it was
americium-241.  Can somebody tell me which it is?

Quoting from page 124:

"The electricity is produced [by nuclear power] without releasing
carbon dioxide, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, smoke, particulate
matter, organic compounds, or carcinogens to the atmosphere.
Additionally, the amount of solid waste (ash) resulting from
nuclear power is far less than the amounts produced by burning
coal and is without such residues as arsenic, lead, cadmium, and
mercury that remain toxic forever.  No nuclear plant turns out
electricity at so high a cost as one burning oil, and all are
competitive with coal-burning facilities."

I have a few problems with this.  Reactors release radioactive
krypton as a routine part of power plant operations.  Isn't this
a carcinogen, simply because it is radioactive?  Also, isn't lead
a component of nuclear waste?  And other elements like barium
which are "toxic forever"?  And how can nuclear power be said to
be cheaper, unless you ignore the unresolved (and ever-escalating)
cost for disposing of the nuclear waste?

Quoting from page 134:

"This material [coal ash] is discharged to the environment _without_
_controls_."  [Emphasis in original.]

Oh?  Are there no environmental regulations covering coal-fired
power plants?

Quoting from page 136:

"It is interesting to note that in our society, $200,000 is spent
annually on safety improvements to save a single life in an
automobile accident--where 50,000 deaths occur each year.
But in the nuclear industry $2 billion is spent yearly to save one
life, even though there have been no fatalities."

I don't understand this statement.  Is she saying the auto industry
spends only $200,000 annually on safety?  That seems absurdly low.
Is she saying that the nuclear industry is spending $2 billion
annually per person at risk (who number in the millions)?  That
seems absurdly high.  I think she must be making some more
obscure and strained comparison, like the spending on the
incremental cost per life saved.

Quoting from page 140:

"A full-scale, non-nuclear model thirty-two meters high has
successfully tested the Geyser system [a proposed Swiss nuclear
power plant] and proved that it is, indeed, self-operating and 'walk
away' safe."

How can a non-nuclear model prove the safety of a nuclear system?
That would be like using placebo pills to "prove" the safety of a new
drug, without using any of the actual drug.

Quoting from page 148, discussing the packaging of nuclear waste
for the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) which has been plagued
by water seeping out of the underground salt formation proposed
for storing nuclear waste:

"How the moisture could destroy the waterproof stainless steel jacket
and dissolve borosilicate glass is not explained by anti-nuclear
forces."

Stainless steel is not a noble metal like gold, and it can corrode.
Borosilicate glass is likewise not impervious to solvents.  I have
in my possession about two dozen Pyrex [Corning brand borosilicate
glass] Petri dishes which were heavily etched by a bacterial growth
medium which was allowed to sit in the dishes for a few months.
(I got lazy and didn't clean them after their last use.)
This was a simple potato starch agar, enriched with calcium acetate.
Some of the etching is about 1 millimeter deep.  Frankly, I was
astounded this could happen so easily, because I had assumed
borosilicate glass was a very chemically-resistant material.  That
is not at all true, provided you give the chemicals a long time to
attack the material.

Quoting from page 153:

"After reprocessing and removal of all the useful and beneficial
isotopes, the residual waste, properly packaged, should be disposed
of _in_the_ocean_.
    As with everything else in our modern technological world, sea
disposal has its opponents, and they are vocal--but wrong.  There are
deserts in the sea as they are on land.  There are some areas
completely devoid of life, lacking even geological evidence that
anything _ever_ lived there."

Totally devoid of life, you say?  We're not talking about the Sea of
Tranquility on the Moon, are we?  Do such places really exist on
Earth?

Quoting from page 154:

"Many marine organisms themselves receives tens of rems (not
millirems) of radiation per year from Polonium-210, which, like
plutonium, is an alpha emiter [sic], and one kind of shrimp gets
an annual dose of 100 rems.  This all happens naturally."

Wow, 100 rems.  Too bad she doesn't give a reference for this
factoid.

On page 156, she refers to the late Vannevar Bush as a 1945
Nobel Laureate.  I have Bush's biography, written shortly before
his death, and it doesn't mention the Nobel Prize.  Modest man, that
Bush!

Quoting from page 165:

"Responsible timber companies have revised their logging practices
and more trees are growing now than 50 years ago, an increase of
more than three and a half times since 1920.  Reforestation is a
usual, not an occasional practice.  Coupled with modern agricultural
procedures that require less land for food production, we now have
at least as much wooded and forested acreage in America as existed
in Colonial times, and probably more."

I thought the forests were disappearing.  Instead, it sounds like
they're threatening to overrun the cities!  I wonder if she includes
kudzu vine under "wooded and forested acreage".
Newsgroups: sci.environment