Re:The Cobalt-60 Accident of Ciudad Juarez (2019)
by 542354234235 on Tuesday October 27, 2020 @01:16PM
(#24909507)
> Decades later, just in our block, there have been many cases of cancer (1 renal carcinoma -- my mom, 1 testicular cancer, 1 melanoma, 3x breast cancer). Sometimes I wonder if that's the natural incidence or if it is in fact a cancer cluster caused by remnants of Cobalt-60.
That is such an interesting and scary thing about it. It is really hard, and takes a lot of careful data collection, to figure out how much cancer is "normal" everyday cancer from smoking, genetics, voodoo curses; and how much is actually "extra" cancer from possible radiation exposure. It would be especially difficult on something as small scale as a neighborhood block, since random variation of even one or two extra or fewer people unlucky enough to get “natural” cancer could completely skew an analysis attempt.
Decades later, just in our block, there have been many cases of cancer (1 renal carcinoma -- my mom, 1 testicular cancer, 1 melanoma, 3x breast cancer). Sometimes I wonder if that's the natural incidence or if it is in fact a cancer cluster caused by remnants of Cobalt-60.
I'm tempted to go back there with a radiation counter of some sort, inside the houses, but I have no idea if a regular geiger counter would suffice (a neighbor who had a radiation counter for construction already checked it out and found nothing when I was a kid, but I'm not sure if he was using the right equipment or if it was sentitive enough. This was in the 90s, and the counter looked like a car battery with a single needle meter).