Spit And Polish

Brookhaven National Laboraratory embarked last week on an expensive scheme to develop "a strategic plan for improving its communications," in other words, to change the public perception of the lab by some sophisticated P.R.

In the first phase, pollsters have been visiting town officials, newspaper and magazine editors, environmental and civic activists, and other apparent opinion-leaders, asking what they know about the lab.

The answers will be used to implement the second stage, a telephone survey of 800 people that will ask them, among other things, "What immediately comes to mind when someone mentions Brookhaven National Laboratory?" The results of the poll will become part of all-out effort to make sure people answer that question with the word "science" rather than "pollution."

It sounds like a lot of trouble, and money, to quantify what has been made clear on the editorial and letters pages of newspapers all over Suffolk County: The lab has a serious image problem.

For starters, it is a Superfund site linked to radioactive and chemical contamination of the soil, the groundwater, and the Peconic River. Its managers have, at least in the past, put more effort into obfuscating the lab's responsibility for that contamination than into straight talk or corrective measures.

The new P.R. campaign is being waged on several fronts. On Saturday, for example, the lab was the scene of an environmental fair, touted as fun for the entire family. Visitors were invited to take guided tours. (Of the nuclear reactor that was shut down after leaking radioactive water?) Nature walks along the Peconic River to "learn about the local environment" were featured. (To ascertain the exact level of plutonium in the river?) Environmental technologies developed at the lab were demonstrated, including a sensor "used to identify a chemical at a safe distance." (Did B.N.L.'s neighbors get to take one home?)

The stakes are too high to find humor in this effort. The lab is a place where research went on at the expense of the environment and with little concern for public health, where otherwise respectable scientists closed their minds to the consequences.

It will take more than P.R. to convince the public that the lab has cleaned up its act.