The Voice Of Fear Mongering

Here's an article about a planned radioactive waste disposal facility in Canada called the Deep Geologic Repository.  These phrases jumped out as being fear mongering:

"Exposure to ionizing radiation - particles such as x-rays and gamma rays energetic enough to dislodge electrons from atoms and molecules - is extremely dangerous."

&

"There is no firm basis for setting a 'safe' level of exposure above background levels of radiation", according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency."



My sense of the words "extremely dangerous" is that if you are exposed to what was discussed immediately previously you will be severely injured or killed.  However, I'm being exposed to particles such as gamma rays right now and I'm not severely injured and obviously still alive.

Obviously the danger depends on the dose, but by preceding "extremely dangerous" with "particles" it heightens the fear mongering because it portrays that something as small as a particle is deadly, which isn't true.

The second sentence plays on "firm basis" and "safe".

We don't know precisely what the cancer risk is at low doses, so we estimate it using the best data available.  That estimate is a firm basis, though it may be wrong, and clearly it's "safe" in the relative sense, though not in the absolute sense.  But then, living isn't safe in the absolute sense, but no one banters about that living is "unsafe".

And of course there's Kevin Kamps and his schtick.......