What use are those to the average Independent reader? But I already indicated that you just would have to look up UK regulations for the precise numbers.

Are you being serious, DoDo? What use is actual, relevant, hard information to the average paper reader? Indeed. I suppose they coul also go and log in on the relevant website to read the report, why does the press need to mention it at all? And if the information is out there, why ask anyone to prepare a report at all? People can go make their own measurements, themselves, if they care about it.

You then quote out of context.

I quoted the ONLY instance in the article of a (indirect) mention of an actual exceedance of the (unknown) trigger levels.

I suspect natural radioactivity is out of the question

Prove it.

It should not be up to anyone else to prove the negaitve of this. It's up to you to prove such allegations. Your anti-nuclear stance is blinding you. Let's hold nuclear energy to the highest standards, but that means that criticism should also be made with some (ideally, the same) standards of transparency and verification.

That article of the Independent and your own comments totally fail any kind of reasonable standard for proof.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Wikipedia: Readers of The Independent

One could say that a stereotypical 'Independent' reader is well-educated, a Liberal Democrat or perhaps Labour voter, anti-war and interested in issues about the environment. These are directly reflected onto the newspaper's style. The paper's editorial line favours the implementation of proportional representation, and tackling climate change. It often has critical front page spreads about George Bush and many articles by female journalists. Thus it is seen as an educated tabloid newspaper (a 'compact' newspaper).

The question is whether the paper's "educated" readership will put their concern over climate change above a data-driven discussion of the facts and a critical discussion of the sources.

I think the problem is that newspapers don't feel that they have to provide references to additional reading or to their sources more explicitly than a mention in passing.

It may also be an issue that the environmentally-conscious editorial line is an ideological position, and so it's ok to "fix the intelligence around the policy".

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

This is not at all scaremongering, but a regular theme, ever since the farm restrictions were predicted to be over in six weeks ack in 1986.

Using a March 2003 article, the number of farms under monitoring for Caesium contamination: more than 9000 in June 1986, according to a December 2000 BBC article just below 400 then, 386 in March 2003, 375 now. Threshold: 1,000Bq/kg. There is a special regulation to move sheep that has more than this to lower areas, away from the pet bogs, for a few weeks and wait for contamination levels to fall. The 2003 article also mentions that the then prospective new EU members wanted to impose an EU-wide threshold to their lower, 600 Bq/kg threshold.

More on farmland contamination tests in the UK here. No word about background levels, but on differences between soils, and isotopes.

Now, with a dosis factor of 1.3*10^-8, 1000 Bq/kg would make 0.13 mSv per kg meat eaten, so one would have to eat a helluva' lot to get to the 20 mSv per year health safety limit, but not that much to get above, say, the German background level of 2.1 mSv/year, or even the German average exposure (i.e. involving non-natural sources like X-ray screeners) of 4.1 mSv/year.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

If ET finds two or three more people with the capacities of Fran (although they are a rare breed), coupled to the expertise already here, I'd think there would be a very potential competitioner to the Independent.

Talk of differing expectations. Yes, I'd wish every newspaper would do that, especially on the web, but I long ago gave up expecting scientific literature standards from even top-quality general media - or to expect the majority of readers wanting that. (For the majority their papers are still "newspapers of record".)

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}