|
The Long, Strange Road To Irradiating Mail by Michael Colby For fifty years the purveyors of irradiation have been looking for a purpose. It all began, of course, in the 1950s under President Eisenhower's Atomic Energy Commission, specifically its "Atoms for Peace" program. The U.S. was awash in nuclear waste materials, particularly Cesium-137, and it was quickly becoming the Achilles heel of the burgeoning nuclear establishment. Eisenhower, therefore, established the Atoms for Peace program with the specific directive to find peaceful uses for this nuclear waste material. But more than simply finding a use for nuclear garbage, the nuclear establishment wanted to eliminate the cloud of war that surrounded all things nuclear and, instead, demonstrate to U.S. citizens that there were peaceful civilian uses for these new "wonder isotopes." After scrapping ideas such as manufacturing nuclear replacement hearts for cardiac patients, the Atoms for Peace program set its long-term sights on exposing the food supply to radiation. And food irradiation was born. The reasoning given at the time was "shelf-life." Remember, fifty years ago E.coli, salmonella, and factory farming weren't on the nation's agenda. But we were thinking about how to make food last for long periods of time, especially amidst the Cold War mentality that, interestingly enough, had people building nuclear fall-out shelters. And the first thing on people's minds when they thought of hunkering down in a hole for the duration of a nuclear winter was usually "what in the hell are we going to eat?" Ta-da: nuclear food for nuclear winters. It was a match made in cesium heaven. In fact, some of the first scientific promoters of food irradiation used to love to haul out their 30-plus year old cans of "irradiated chicken meat" to flaunt their technological prowess. I remember when Dr. Ed Josephson, a former Army scientist and one of the grandfathers of irradiation, brought his can of the old meat to a congressional hearing in the mid-1980s when the Reagan administration was about to issue its sweeping approvals for food irradiation. After a mumbling testimony about how safe it was to expose foods to radiation doses equivalent to tens of millions of chest x-rays, the crusty and very unhealthy looking Josephson proudly declared that he'd been "eating it for years" and he was fine. Even the right-wingers sitting in the room could barely contain themselves, each seemingly making a mental note to tell Josephson that there must be a better way for him to testify. And Josephson went one step further. Reaching into his briefcase he pulled out a can of the irradiated chicken meat, a can opener, a knife, a plate, and a stash of toothpicks. "This has been on my shelf for over 20 years," declared Josephson as he popped the top of the can and began dicing the pale meat into bite sized squares. "And it's still very good." But, other than Josephson and his colleagues within the irradiation industry, there were no takers. And I will always remember the look on Representative Henry Waxman's face as the plate of pasty meat was thrust in front of him. He wasn't about to partake in this impromptu experiment. The Reagan administration did eventually grant the first widespread approvals for food irradiation in 1986, when fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, spices, and flavorings were approved. And each subsequent administration has done its share to further the range of approvals, to the point now that practically everything we consume has been approved to be exposed to huge doses of radiation - including meat, poultry and seafood. But there's always been one big problem with food irradiation: the public doesn't want anything to do with it. And the irradiation corporations have had to change their purpose time and time again to try and find a niche for their unseemly nuclear wares. Gone were the days that irradiation was promoted as a peaceful use for nuclear waste material, or that it was a way to keep bad meat edible for decades. Now we were into the realm of "needing" irradiation to fix all the problems of a filthy meat industrial complex, particularly E.coli and salmonella. The American public, however, seemed more willing to give up meat than be forced to eat meat that had been exposed to both fecal matter and 75 million chest x-rays. Yum, yum. But as I've learned in more than 15 years of fighting all forms of irradiation, this industry always seems to pull yet another trick out of its bag no matter how close to death it gets. Enter anthrax. I nearly fell out of my chair last week while innocently trying to catch up on the mainstream news and hearing an "anthrax expert" on CNN declare that it was "time for the government to give irradiation a look" as a way to sterilize the mail. Gulp. And what started as a blip of a mention has now turned into a steady drumbeat of irradiation propaganda that has garnered the attention of the highest government officials, the New York Times editorial writers, and about every media outlet in the nation scrambling to assure the American people that "there IS something that can be done." Unfortunately, all irradiation propaganda begins the same way: with declarations of just how "easy" and "effective" it is. It's also usually accompanied by the idiotic proclamation that "it's really just like your microwave or the airport luggage scanner." Hogwash. Irradiation is about as similar to a microwave as a chainsaw is to a butter knife. Interestingly, many of the bigwigs in the field of irradiation are moving cautiously with the news that their technology may "solve" the anthrax in the mail fury currently gripping the nation. The Nordion Corporation, for example, the world's leader in cobalt-60 irradiation, isn't jumping on the simplistic bandwagon that irradiation is "the cure" for mail-based anthrax. In fact, nobody with any scientific merit will be found on that bandwagon, mostly because no one knows if it will work, if it will cause more problems than it will solve, or if it is even possible to set up the kind of nuclear infrastructure that would be required at hundreds - if not thousands - of postal centers throughout the nation. Let's take them one at a time. First, efficacy: irradiating raw anthrax spores will almost assuredly kill them. But irradiating anthrax spores encased in an envelope that is in turn encased in mail crates may not be as effective, mostly because the ionizing radiation may not penetrate the crates deep enough to deliver a lethal dose. Worse, whatever anthrax may survive the irradiation process may be more harmful than its original version, including the possibility that it may be a new, radiation-resistant strain. The next bugaboo the U.S. postal service needs to worry about when considering irradiating the mail is how to avoid irradiating products that would be damaged, destroyed, or even made harmful if they were exposed to massive doses of radiation. Take, for example, electronic devices like computers, software, and the like. If they were to enter these proposed mail irradiation chambers they could be rendered useless. And how about irradiation metal objects? Exposing metal to ionizing radiation can induce radioactivity if enough of it collects on the surfaces. And there's a lot of metal in the mail in the form of binders, paperclips, and pens, not to mention all of the consumer products containing metal that are routinely shipped via the U.S. Postal Service. How, may I ask, are they going to keep all of these products out of the irradiation chambers? And if they do figure out a way to do this, how long will it take the anthrax-toting-terrorists to figure this out? Then there's the issue of infrastructure. If we're serious about irradiating the nation's mail, it will take years upon years to design and construct these facilities. And if they go with the cheaper alternatives by using cesium or cobalt, we're opening a Pandora's Box of pitfalls that include everything from the dangers of transporting this highly-radioactive material, worker safety within these facilities, and environmental contamination from the kinds of leaks, spills, and mishaps that have frequently occurred at existing irradiation facilities. And let's not forget that cesium and cobalt irradiators have to be routinely replenished with their potent blend of radioactive toxins, and the "spent" fuel has to be shipped and stored in a safe location for many generations to come. And what happens when the terrorists learn that every little postal office in our nation is equipped with a nuclear mail irradiator? Talk about an easy target. In a time when there's an understandable amount of paranoia about our existing nuclear facilities due to the threat of terrorists attacks, how much sense does it make to spread these nuclear materials around to every postmaster who requests them? No, irradiating the mail is neither "easy" nor "effective." And the people getting up on their shallow soapboxes ought to be ashamed for promoting it as such. There will be oodles of cash made in the struggling irradiation business in the days, weeks, and months to come. But sooner or later this irradiation bubble will burst, just as it did when it was being proposed to make meat last for decades. If anything needs to be nuked, it's the idea that irradiation will solve our current anthrax problem. Write to me at: mailto:mcolby@foodandwater.org Source: http://www.foodandwater.org
|
