A Place to Stand

This is a letter I sent out, slightly edited,to the Scottish Press and the BBC. If it goes according to precedent something critical may be published by the east coast press but not the central Scotland Press (this despite the fact that Dalgety bay is only a few miles across the Forth from Edinburgh but presumably not within those paper's catchment area. The Scottish press, which has to pay some regard to its customers, do not seem particularly interested in SEPA's lies.

   However this Dalgety bay radiation story was the main item on the Scottish bit at the end of the BBC news last night. This despite the fact that the BBC know, with absolute certainty, that SEPA have lied about it. Once again we see that there is nobody at the BBC who is a journalist rather than a state propaganda flack and that they are all willing to tell any lie and censor any fact to promote the state's agenda. SEPA are, once again producing a scare story about radioactivity found at Dalgety Beach. This is a spurious story which has been disproven several times - the level of radiation is easily consistent with natural background radiation. Indeed an expert hired by SEPA assured them that the level of radiation here is 1/3rd of that naturally found in any street in Aberdeen.

SEPA have previously been caught telling at least 2 major lies on the subje
ct. Firstly claiming, on the BBC, to have made studies of the radioactive materials and chemically proven them to be made of paint. Repeated FoI searches have proven that no such finding of paint particles has ever been made. SEPA have also claimed to have found the "radium and its daughter elements" in the beach rock. In fact the "daughter element" that radium breaks down into is radon - a gas not a rock. The scientific illiteracy required to make such a silly claim is obvious. Since SEPA have promised to use public money to sue those who criticise them I will not specify exactly what degree of illiteracy would be required by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency but it seems inconsistent with SEPA being capable of being anything but a propaganda organisation using false scare stories to get more money from the public.

Their recent revival of this scare is that they have found a "piece of metal" that is "highly radioactive." As with most anti-radiation scare stories, no actual figures are given although it is claimed that this particular piece of metallic slag was 10 times more radioactive than the previous particles (which would make it a whole 3 times more radioactive than Aberdeen granite. 10 times more than normal natural background is insignificant and not particularly unlikely for something containing heavy metals. Certainly soluble paint containing minute quantities of radium on cardboard dials which may, or may not, have been present in immeasurably small quantities 66 years ago, seems unrelated to a piece of metallic slag. A reasonable assumption is that had this come ashore anywhere else, except Dounreay, it would never have been commented on. But since we are paying these people to pop round to Dalgety with their Geiger counters every few months they feel it necessary to make a big scare out of a perfectly natural occurrence. Set a geiger counter at a low enough setting and it will show anything is radioactive. Bananas for example give off 1 mSv, sharing a bed gives you 0.5 mSv, which puts the 3 mSv occasionally found in the Fukushima zone in perspective.

This beach probably contains around 3 tonnes of uranium and 6 tonnes of thorium because that is what any square mile of land contains. It is perfectly natural and a fraction of a gram of soluble paint 66 years years ago is of no importance.

The BBC, in particular, choose to promote this because it fits their own Luddite anti-nuclear agenda. The same tactic is seen of hyping "discoveries" at Dounreay of "hot spots" where the "heat" of the hotspots is never named. Even under the official theory one would have to eat Dounreay beach down to a level of several inches to have any chance of receiving significant damaging radiation (or one could choose several tons of bananas).

I say even under the official theory because that theory, that there is no level of radioactivity which is not dangerous is scientifically unjustifiable. There never has been any scientific evidence that it is true. It was simply invented by bureaucrats because it was easy to measure. On the contrary the evidence is undisputed that for plants, laboratory cultures and small animals (with whom experiments are possible) that low level radiation is beneficial to health. For humans (where experiment is not possible) there is still strong statistical evidence for the beneficial effects (known as hormesis) in that the health of populations in places with high background radiation are routinely better than those where it doesn't exist.

If SEPA are unaware of this they are unfitted by incompetence to be paid out of the public purse. If they are aware of it they are ethically unfitted.

DALGETY BAY - DISSECTING SEPA's RADIATION LIE

21/8 Dounraey natural radioactivity found shock

12/6 SEPA say no money spent on investigating Dalgety Bay

10/6 Dunfermline Press article

29/5 Letter in the press & Journal

27/5 Guest article on the science

22/5 Dundee Courier article

19/5 Unpublished newspaper letter

15/5 My reply to SEPA

14/5 SEPA's response to FoI enquiry - they break the law by not answering

1/4 appeal to the Scottish Information Commissioner over SEPA's ignoring Freedom of Information Law

24/3 Putting in FoI appeal

2/2 Radio Scotland programme - I phone in & SEPA representative deliberately lies

7/2 SEPA lied

10/2 SEPA's reply

11/2 how SEPA lied - see the science

12/2 SEPA's reaction

25/2 Deliberate Scottish government complicity

  Since SEPA has previously threatened to sue me, using public money, if I say anything untrue about them I will am sending them, and the Scottish civil service and government and the BBC, copies of this and ask them if they wish to claim thatI have said anything whatsoever about SEPA's dishonest claims here. Or if they wish to suggest that these claims, maintained for so long, represent anything other than the very higherst standard of scinetific and ethicl behaviour SEPA aspire to. Or, since the Scottish government are using our taxes to fund this fraudulent scare story, it represents other thjan thestandard of honesty to be expected from them. Or, bearing in mind that the BBC already know, apparently beyond any possible dispute, that this is a fraud they are promoting, whether this represents other than the highest standard of honesty to which any BBC employee aspires.

   I al;so ask them if they dispute, in any way, that,this scare depend on the facts about radium paint having been found are true (the FoIs prove they are a lie) and that the LNT theory is correct. If even 1 leg of this 2 legged stool exists SEPA, the BBC and the Scottish government must know of scientific evidence supporting the LNT theory that low levels of radiation are harmful. In which case they will be able to supply such evidence that 1 leg of their alleged case actually exists.