Dalgety Bay fears
JOHN Cameron (Letters, 2 December) writes scathingly of the alleged radiation hazard at Dalgety Bay.
The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency’s (Sepa) own consultants years ago told it that the radiation level there was “less than two-thirds of that of the typical Aberdeen street”; that the amount of radium in the (water-soluble) paint 60 years ago needed to paint all the numbers on the dials of these planes is likely to be well short of a gram; whereas in a foot of topsoil over any square mile anywhere there averages eight tonnes of uranium and thorium and 1 gram of radium.
Despite Sepa’s claims to have found “radium and its daughter elements” (radium’s sole daughter element is radon, a gas which could not remain there), no chemical proof of radium has been found. The radiation at Dalgety Bay is overwhelmingly – and possibly entirely – background radiation, and far from the highest level found naturally. Sepa has been playing on unfounded public hysteria about radiation and ignorance thereof which has been promoted by political “environmentalists” for decades.
NEIL CRAIG
Woodlands Road
Glasgow
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Thursday 23 February 2012
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