Word: millirems
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...honest about it, I don't know," replied Metropolitan Edison President Walter Creitz when reporters persisted. The first estimate came from William Dornsife, a nuclear engineer who had flown in the state helicopter. He put the radiation reading taken downwind from the plant at 1 millirem per hour?not an alarming or unalarming level. By 3 in the afternoon, Creitz put the reading at 2 to 3 millirems per hour, measured at the outer edge of the 200-acre plant site on the island...
...there is still controversy over what constitutes safe exposure to radiation. Most scientists agree that there is a 50% chance that adults exposed to 450 rems* of radiation will die. Below about 50 rems, no visible damage has been measured. With little empirical evidence, the AEC has adopted 500 millirems (one millirem is one-thousandth of a rem) as the maximum radiation that the general public can be safely exposed to in one year. That is a very small amount. By comparison, the sun and other natural radiation sources expose the average individual to about 100 millirems each year...
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