IEER SDA Volume 4, Number 1

It Pays to Increase Your Jargon Power
With Dr. Egghead

Dr. Egghead is IEER's leading authority on jargon. His column is a regular feature of Science for Democratic Action.This column will not only cure your jargon blues, but produce a positive exhilaration. This is one of IEER's many continuing contributions to reducing health care costs in the United States.

At long last, IEER's expert on jargon has returned from his extended journey to the Galapagos Islands. Since he had some sort of accident on the way home involving a magnifying glass (he won't tell us what happened), he has given us questions on words that are commonly used in the field of risk analysis.

1. relative risk

  1. the risk that one's relatives will drop by for an extended stay.
  2. the likelihood that a storyteller will talk on and on and on.
  3. the ratio of disease incidence (or mortality) in an exposed population to that in an unexposed population.

2. control population

  1. the fraction of the population who are control freaks.
  2. the upper echelons of the power elite.
  3. a group of people not exposed to the toxic agent under study but otherwise as close in all characteristics to the exposed group as possible.

3. pathway analysis

  1. a Freudian therapy that involves going back to the familiar paths of childhood.
  2. the little-known study of ant messages in which the twisting paths of ant farms are decoded for hidden messages (S.O.S. seems to be the most common one).
  3. an analysis of the ways in which toxic or radioactive substances can reach human beings from the plant, place, or process in which they are made, stored, used, or dumped -- via air, water, soil, the food chain, or some combination of these pathways.

4. specific activity

  1. the term Miss Manners uses to refer to distasteful or unsavory habits, as in "stop that specific activity!"
  2. the snoring of nuclear bomb-makers when they sleep on a special bed (really) at the Nevada Test Site after a successful test.
  3. As radionuclides undergo radioactive decay, their nuclei "disintegrate" ("transmute") into other nuclei by emitting particles or radiation. Specific activity refers to the number of disintegrations over a given period of time (referred to as "activity") per unit mass of a pure radioisotope; or the activity of a radioisotope in a material per unit mass of that material. Specific activity is expressed in becquerels per gram (Bq/g), curies per gram (Ci/g), or various decimal fractions of curies per gram (like microcuries per gram).

5. source term

  1. the mother of all terms.
  2. a code word for an undercover informant.
  3. .the amount of a specific pollutant emitted or discharged to a particular medium, such as air or water, from a particular source, as for instance in the phrase: "the iodine-131 source term for air emission from the Hanford Chemical Separation Plant."

Don't scroll down here
unless you are ready to see the answers!

Answers:
1. 3
2. 3
3. 3
4. 3
5. 3
Return to SDA Vol. 4 No.1 Main Page
Return to SDA Main Page
Return to IEER Home Page
Institute for Energy and Environmental Research

Comments toOutreach Coordinator: ieer@ieer.org
Takoma Park, Maryland, USA

Last updated: August, 1996