SO1'7R

February 21, 1975

Mr. Richard & Mrs. Peggy Bauhaus
3800 Shadowhill Drive
Santa Rosa, Ca, 95404

I have your letter of February 15th and of course resonate with
the concerns that you have expressed there,

The book “Poisoned Power" was already obsolete and was to some
extent already misleading at the time that it was published as far as
its reference to federal radiation standards are concerned. I do not
know what motivated the AEC to adhere for so long to the .17r standard
on the one hand while many of their other operational standards were
already de facto far more stringent. However, partly in response to the
Goffman-Tamplin campaign, the AEC did long since revise its posture from
requiring "the smallest practical amount of radiation" to a numerical
figure far smaller than the .17r standard. This 1s expressed in somewhat
complicated terms but the net result fs that the current radiation
standard for many years has been a small percentage of the already
existing natural background.

In fact, the controversy over this question has gradually receded -
one might say it took some time for Goffman and Tamplin to concede that
they had won their argument! - and the principal issue at controversy
at the present time of operation of nuclear power plants, but rather the
hazards of catastrophic accidents which of course the regulations absolutely
forbéd! The question is instead the reliability of the safety engineering
design in assuring the compliance of nuclear energy plant operation with
accepted standards, and I hardly need tell you that she subject is not only a
complex one but is not really within the domain of biological as opposed
to engineering expertise.

i have, however, attached some other comments that will help tell you
something of my position on the matter.

With respect to your other questions, I do not think there is any
serious dispute than any amount of radiation is harmful but the issue is
the level of harm. As noted in one of my attached articles, it has seemed
to me that the only sensible standard of judgement on this point was a
comparison with the natural background or rather with the fluctuations
in natural background that we see in our dafly lives. Considering that

 
-2- 2/21/75

at different altitudes we experience more than a two-fold variation

in the background, for example comparing living in San Francisco or in
Denver, it is difficult for me to believe that consistent peeple will

make a great deal of fuss about variationsamounting to a few percent

of that same figure. You will note furthermore that my own estimates of

the quantitative hazard, however clumsy the translation into dollar amounts
will be, would also suggest the relative triviality of those few percent
fluctuations by comparison with many, many other factors that influence
our health.

With respect to your number three, the figure of .17 rad is no longer
relevant.

With respect to four, I do not really think that genetic damage plays
a very large role in the current controversy. Even in consequence of the
core melt down kind of catastwophe, and making the worst possible
assumptions about the magnitéde of such an oceurrence, the overwhelming
route of injury to man would be the increase in the incidence of cancer
as a result of intake of radioactivity into somatic tissues.

Number five. My suspicion is that if we knew much more about radiation
effects, we probably would allay our gravest concerns from contamination
from nuclear power reactors, and indeed very likely could undertake
remedial measures on many of the long-term delayed consequences which would
further lessen the risks. So indeed one wishes that we did not know much
more and could proceed more comfortably along these lines. Meanwhile, we
really must be quite conservative and use our present information to set
upper and lower bounds to the level of health damage that might result
from radiation exposure and it is these kinds of numbers that we are
discussing. Keeping in mind again that we are inevitably and constantly exposed
to at least .1 r per year as the natural background, I think we can be
reasonably confident that we do know the outer bounds of harmful effects.
So the questions really are not biological ones but rather the engineering
issue of the safeguards against catastrophic accidents.

I certainly appreciate getting an intelligent inquiry such as yours,
and I wish I knew where I could point for a reasoned statement of the
controversy that actually attacked the issues that you raised and stated
them carefully from the variety of viewpoints that pertained today, I
certainly hope that during the next months, particularly in response to the
publication of the Rasmussen report, that there will be more readily available
information for intelligent judgement. I am enclosing two references that
are obviously quite polarized but which may be helpful to you in making up
your own mind.

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics
JL/rr
Enclosures