Cindy Folkers specializes in radiation impacts on health. She works with Beyond Nuclear. They call attention to the connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the need to abandon both to safeguard our future. Two weeks after Folkers gave this talk, Beyond Nuclear, in coalition with other groups, filed a petition with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to drastically reduce the amount of radioactive cesium permitted in food, from an unreasonable 1200 Bq/kg, to 5 Bq/kg. In post-Chernobyl Belarus, at just 11 Bq/kg of internal cesium contamination children can be susceptible to heart problems. At 50 Bq/kg, children can start having permanent tissue damage.
Mary Olson is Southeast Regional Director of NIRS, the Nuclear Information and Resource Services. She speaks on: Gender Matters in the Atomic Age. In 2011 Mary Olson published a briefing paper on the fact that Women as a group suffer significantly more from the impact of ionizing radiation than do men. There is a dramatic fifty-percent greater incidence of cancer and fifty-percent greater rate of death from cancer among women, compared to the effects of the same radiation dose level to men.
Mary Olson and Cindy Folkers spoke at the Fukushima Symposium, organized by the Helen Caldicott Foundation and o-sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility, held in NYCity on March 12, 2013.
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