218
Plutonium levels near US atomic site in Los Alamos similar to Chornobyl, study finds
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
218 points (92.6% liked)
News
23361 readers
3174 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Members of the general public can't make this sort of informed decision. They don't have the very specific background knowledge necessary. Plutonium in small amounts is not dangerous unless you eat it or breathe it in as dust. How much Plutonium dust is in the air near this trail? What is the level of radiation exposure from it compared to the background level that everyone is exposed to? What risk of cancer does the increased exposure correspond to?
These are questions that experts are able to answer but almost all hikers aren't. The general public already trusts experts to regulate nuclear power plants, radiology equipment, etc. It makes no sense to want a warning sign here unless you already live in a state of constant paranoia.
It's ironic to use public ignorance as a reason to keep information from them.
I don't see it as a matter of keeping information from the public. The wording on the sign would be technically true, but the clear implication would be that the area is particularly dangerous. Why else would there be a sign? If the area is not particularly dangerous (which is what experts have determined) then the sign is actually causing the public to believe something false.
It's like those California warnings about cancer-causing chemicals in pretty much everything. They're not literally false but they don't take relative risk into account and the right thing to do is to ignore all of them. To the extent that the public doesn't ignore them, the public has been misinformed by the California government.
That's the whole point of things like this.
Make it seem super scary, turn public opinion against anything nuclear.
Usually you see articles like this pop up whenever there are renewed discussions for nuclear power plants. Not sure if this is one of those, or just clickbait.
I feel like this is the difference between marking something as “plutonium area” versus something designed to target the fears associated like saying “Warning: Minor Risk from Plutonium Exposure” and then post a blurb in decent size font below that explaining the warning.
Because what California does is post a generalized warning that doesn’t quantify the risk and does not inform the public accurately about what the warning exists for and that is not helpful.
do you know there's always chloroform in chlorinated water? it's some laughable ppt of it, but analytical chemists got so good at detecting random shit they can make entire career out of scaring morons