Let’s de-politicise the Lynas issue — Stop Lynas Coalition, The Malaysian Insider, March 21, 2012 The majority of us anti-Lynas people feel offended by the government’s unending insistence the issue is politicised. We feel belittled by a government that does not see us rakyat as capable of thinking for ourselves, and so easily hoodwinked by the opposition.
They insist on talking facts, which came to mean solely the IAEA review report, but completely ignored all other dissenting opinions, even if these dissenting opinions are voiced by esteemed professional bodies such as the Bar Council and the Malaysian Medical Association. Perhaps, their members are somehow misled too.
These opinions are raised over time in published articles and public feedback and they have either been poorly addressed, or completely ignored. I hope to raise 3 main ones in this article and request that the government gives them befitting consideration so that we can de-politicise this Lynas issue.
a) The radiation risk is greater than what Lynas and the Malaysian government are willing to admit
The radiation safety aspect of LAMP is legitimised by the IAEA’s review. However, increasing number of scientific literature points to a strong possibility that the IAEA model may have underestimated the risk of internal emitters, which are radioactive sources that are inhaled or ingested. This hypothesis is not merely based on correlation type studies, but is backed with sound scientific reasoning.
Thorium accumulates in the body. According to the “Radiological and Chemical Fact Sheets to Support Health Risk Analyses for Contamination”, about 0.02 per cent to 0.05 per cent of ingested thorium is dissolved in the bloodstream, and subsequently deposited mainly in the bones where the radioactive source becomes embedded within the bone tissue for a few decades . We are unsure exactly how much the body retains thorium from inhalation, but we know that “thorium is taken up in the body much more readily if inhaled rather than ingested”. True enough, the Radiological Risk Coefficient from inhalation is 450 times greater than that of ingestion [1].
Therefore if significant embedment of thorium is expected, the competing theory against IAEA’s ICRP (International Commission on Radiological Protection) model, the ECRR (European Committee on Radiation Risk) model must be considered because it takes into account the effects of thorium retention in the body. ECRR proponents reasonably believe that the ICRP formulation is wrong to dilute the radiation exposure from internal sources to the whole body, instead of confining it to the surrounding tissue only. So, the ECRR contends that the ICRP model has underestimated the real risk of low-level radiation.
In an email exchange between Lynas’ Radiological Safety Officer Nick Tsurikov and the editor for ECRR Chris Busby, Chris Busby suggested that the risk from internal thorium exposure should be 100 times greater than what IAEA says it is [2]. The fact is, there is much uncertainty over the actual risk of low-level radiation within the scientific community. It is foolish for the Malaysian government to ignore the possibility that the ECRR might be right….. http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/sideviews/article/lets-de-politicise-the-lynas-issue-stop-lynas-coalition