Background: The International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) [1] has stated that interventions i.e., remedial actions should do more good than harm. Because remedial action is largely a construction activity one can examine the published statistics to understand the construction worker risk involved. Construction risks ranks third in occupational danger behind agriculture/mining and forestry/fishing, but has a much larger workforce. For the decade of the 1990s the fatality rate and causes have not changed significantly with an annual risk of about 1 in 10,000 to construction workers of being killed on the job. This risk is considerably higher than the environmental risk (typically expressed as cancer) to the public which remedial action criteria tend to specify Various researchers have published that toxins in the environment only cause a small percentage of cancers i.e., 1-3 percent [2,3]. Estimates of hypothetical fatal cancers are inflated be cause of highly inflated parameters driving dose estimates. Primarily it is assumed that people will change their living habits and move onto or near uncontrolled waste sites. Methods: The experience from completed cleanup projects has been examined to answer the question posed in the title. These case studies highlight methods used to estimate the risk or cancers saved because of the remediation-taking place compared to the actual worker injury and fatality experience. Even though some analysis include the estimates of worker risk, there is little or no discussion which highlights the fact that real risk is being traded for hypothetical risk. This paper is an attempt to review this situation and through cited literature and the cases studied, come to a better understanding of what if any good is really being done. Results & Discussion: High percentage occupancy factors, e.g., 100% are used which multiplied by large populations exposed to miniscule levels of radiation [4] (at or near background levels) unreal levels of fatal cancers are predicted. Observed are technically indefensible numbers of cancers being calculated for these hypothetical people. This and other maximizing assumptions inflate the risk. The inflated risk, along with very conservative criteria, drives the removal of large volumes of soil and debris. An unintended consequence of these costly well-intentioned [5] remedial actions is the real fatalities and injuries that occur to workers doing the construction and to members of the public through transportation activities. Conclusion: It is important to consider the transfer of risk from hypothetical victims to the real victims in remedial action decision making.
