KISS FLORIDA GOODBYE

I had warned readers of the upcoming campaign against the Galileo launch [AtE Oct, Nov 89] and given reasons why nuclear fuel had to be used for the on-board power supply ("plutonium-powered probe," the networks called it, which is in a sense true, but was designed to give the impression of "nuclear-propelled," and was so understood by most casual listeners). I am happy to say that my refutations included all major charges made in the article "Kiss Florida Goodbye" in the New York Times (10/17/89). To get the flavor of the article, look at the picture of the Grim Reaper (originally half-page sized) accompanying an article that was scan-dalous even by the gutter standards of that tableau.

That left only a few funny innuendoes in the article unanswered, such as "On the second earth flyby, the probe will be only 185 miles above the earth and moving at more than 30,000 mph . . ." That makes me in acute danger of drowning at sea: I am no more than a horrifying single mile above the Atlantic, not to mention that I am speeding at more than double that velocity around the sun.

But there are some other points. As stated before, enforcing the same accountability for the press as for the lower three branches of government is no abridgement of the First Amendment. Had the judge ruled in favor of the Christics and other full-time saboteurs, the cost to NASA (and the American people) would have been hundreds of millions of dollars, with the damage done to defense of the country (experience for the Space Shield) unquantifiable. Why should it be impossible to sue the fear mongers for damages that others (e.g., "victims" of Agent orange) get without proof of injury? Among the defendants we would find not only the NYT and some professor of journalism Karl Grossman (call him in for your next gall bladder operation), but also Spotlight, reputedly a virulently antisemitic (as well as virulently antinuclear) sheet associated with the "historians" who call the Jewish holocaust a hoax. It reprinted the whole article and added a photograph of Grossman, who looks quite Jewish to me. If so, he must be very pleased to be thus celebrated, as must the editors of what Spotlight presumably calls the Hymietown Times. I take it both the publishers and the author must have given reprint permission, for neither has protested very ferociously against reprinting the article, which is eminently suited to Spotlight's level.

But back to the badly lacking court where a suit for damages could be filed if the press were not above the law. One of the items to be introduced as evidence by the plaintiffs would be Grossman's statement that "less than one millionth of a gram of plutonium is a fatal dose," attributed to Kaku, allegedly a professor of nuclear en-gineering, -- an aggravating circumstance, if true. Among the evidence to counter this claim and the "most toxic substance known to man" nonsense would be the following table, based on B.L. Cohen, "Hazards from plutonium toxicity," Health Physics January 1977, quoted in the German magazine Transmedia, July 1989:

Substance lethal dose [mg] Death in

Ingested:

botulism toxin 0.00005 hours to days

nicotine 60-100 seconds to days

aflatoxin (in mushrooms) 0.01 hours to days

aconitin (in flowers) 1-2 hours

strychnine 100-200 hours

cyanide 200 minutes

plutonium 6000 more than 15 years

In blood:

snake poison 0.005-1 hours to days

plutonium 2 more than 15 years

Inhaled:

nerve gas 1 hours

cadmium vapors 90 hours

plutonium 5 more than 15 years

To evade these comparisons, plutonium is sometimes called "the most toxic of all known radioactive substances," which would be quite a restriction even if it were true, but it isn't. The "com-mitted effective dose equivalent," in rems per millicurie for inhaled plutonium is 7.8, which is exceeded not only by several other transuranics, but also by Mother Nature's protactinium 231 (32 rems/mCi), thorium 232 (41), and actinium 227 (120).

If plutonium is to be ingested in quantities so large that the dose is lethal within hours to days, the fatal dose is 500 mg, as compared to the doses of hydrogen Parathion (100 mg) and arsenic (120 mg); for inhalation under that condition the lethal dose is 25 mg [H.W. Patterson and D.S. Myers, Selected aspects of plutonium in the en-vironment, Lawrence Liverm. Lab, Rpt. Misc. 2644, 11/16/1976.] The latter figure, it should be noted, is not only 500,000 times higher than the dose for botulism toxin, but 25,000 higher than Grossman and Kaku's sick concoction.