The unfortunate Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki provide us with a test lab without peer. Thousands of citizens of all ages were exposed to different amounts of radiation in a very short period of time. From their locations at the time of the blast, their exposures could be determined with relative accuracy. Moreover, they were expected to carry and update their health records. As has been shown, the exposed survivors had unexpectedly longer and healthier lifetimes than did their unexposed cohorts.
But there is now a laboratory for low-level radiation absorbed over a period of twenty years. From 1982 to 1984, about 180 apartment buildings housing 10,000 Taiwanese tenants were built with cobalt-60-contaminated steel (half-life of 5.3 years). Since, as we all know, radiation causes cancer, these unfortunates must be dying like flies.
Well, not exactly. The assessed cancer rate of occupants of the apartments is 3.5 deaths per 100,000 person-years. The average death rate of the general population over the same twenty-year period is 116 persons per 100,000 person-years - resulting in a 97% reduction of fatal cancer.
Have you heard about this story on Headline News? No? Well, maybe no one is interested in reducing his risk of cancer by ninety-seven percent. But just in case you are, you may want to take a look at a paper entitled, "Is Chronic Radiation an Effective Prophylaxis Against Cancer?" [Chen, W.L., Luan, Y.C., et al., "Is Chronic Radiation an Effective Prophylaxis Against Cancer?" Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Vol. 9, No. 1, Spring 2004. Taiwanese officials have resisted providing information needed for a first rate epidemiological report, apparently embarrassed that their LNT predictions didn't pan out.]
Showing posts with label radiation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label radiation. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
Saturday, April 23, 2016
Epilogue
Writing a book seems to be much like building a house, where the final trimming and painting seems to take as much time as the rest of the project. I started this manuscript in 1998, and the first draft was complete in 2000. But then, because of personal circumstances, I was forced to put the book aside for several years. There was not a day during that period that I didn't kick myself for not getting this information out.
I mention this since you, dear reader, may have noted a dearth of studies and references after the year 2000. It is not because they're not there, but because if I had started over to include them, I never would have finished.
There are, however, several highlights during this time that I feel compelled to mention:
Microbiology
In chapter 10 (A Day or So in the Life of a Cell), it was noted that individual cells exposed to radiation in vitro, behaved as the LNT would predict: the more radiation, the less healthy the cell. And conversely when the cell was part of a system of cells (in vivo), the group of cells appeared to respond to radiation stimulation as a group - as if they were talking among themselves about the stimulus.
While I still have trouble believing it, there are now devices called "micro beams" that can shoot a single alpha particle into a particular cell. Along with this, there are methods to determine the chemical response to the target cell, as well as the cells in its vicinity. These experiments have clearly determined that cells do communicate - which we would suspect, as part of a complex organism requiring numbers of different types of specializations for survival. This confirms the existence of a mechanism known as the bystander effect, whereby a limited number of cells receiving a low dose can communicate a message to a large number of sibling cells.
I mention this since you, dear reader, may have noted a dearth of studies and references after the year 2000. It is not because they're not there, but because if I had started over to include them, I never would have finished.
There are, however, several highlights during this time that I feel compelled to mention:
Microbiology
In chapter 10 (A Day or So in the Life of a Cell), it was noted that individual cells exposed to radiation in vitro, behaved as the LNT would predict: the more radiation, the less healthy the cell. And conversely when the cell was part of a system of cells (in vivo), the group of cells appeared to respond to radiation stimulation as a group - as if they were talking among themselves about the stimulus.
While I still have trouble believing it, there are now devices called "micro beams" that can shoot a single alpha particle into a particular cell. Along with this, there are methods to determine the chemical response to the target cell, as well as the cells in its vicinity. These experiments have clearly determined that cells do communicate - which we would suspect, as part of a complex organism requiring numbers of different types of specializations for survival. This confirms the existence of a mechanism known as the bystander effect, whereby a limited number of cells receiving a low dose can communicate a message to a large number of sibling cells.
Friday, April 15, 2016
Yes, You Can Be Too Careful (Part 2)
Bernard Cohen reports, in his book The Nuclear Energy Option, [Plenum Press, New York, 1990] that $100,000 in medical treatments or highway safety improvements would save a life. Government, meanwhile, spends - or requires the spending of - $2.5 billion (yes, that's billion) to save a life from radiation exposure at the cost of 25,000 less "obvious" lives. And it now appears that the life supposedly saved from low-level radiation wasn't saved at all, as it is surfacing that the decrease in hormetic range radiation is actually costing lives.
Another appalling case reported by Rod Adams, editor of Atomic Energy Insights, involved a project used to blast out "contaminated soil" near the nuclear reactor at McMurdo Sound in Antarctica. Battling potentially lethal weather conditions, the task was completed at considerable risk to the workers and immense cost to taxpayers. So what was done with the offending material that may have caused a needed hormetic effect in the radiation-poor polar region? It was shipped (at another obscene cost to the taxpayers) to the United States, where it was used for parking lot fill in Port Hueneme, California.
Rather than trying to paraphrase the flowing and informative prose of Dr. Rockwell, here is a final example of government's mindless adherence to the Linear No-Threshold hypothesis - in his words:
"The question of whether tiny amounts of radiation must be avoided, even at great cost, is neither abstract nor trivial. Hundreds of billions of dollars are to be spent 'remediating' U.S. sites even though there is no scientific basis for claiming any health or other benefit. Worldwide, this cost has been estimated at more than a trillion dollars. [A more recent estimate, based on actual remediation projects, is $3 trillion worldwide, and $1 trillion for the United States alone. Using the figure of $20 million per life sacrificed, a trillion dollars is equal to 50,000 lives at the shrine of the Linear No-Threshold hypothesis.]
"This is in addition to the unquantifiable cost of lives lost by fear of mammograms, radioactive smoke detectors, irradiated food, or other beneficial uses of radiation. Most, if not all, of this cost would be saved if we did not try to reduce radiation levels below the natural radiation background, which is several hundred times lower than the lowest levels at which any health effects have been found."
Rockwell continues:
"But one person's wasted tax money is another's lucrative contract. Here's one example to remember. At some 46 sites in 14 states, there are some 82 million cubic feet of uranium tailings left over from the wartime weapons program. This material is what is left when you take as much uranium out of the natural ore as you can. It is now less radioactive than the original ore, and 20 times less radioactive than what the law calls "low-level waste." There is a lot of natural rock that is more radioactive. [Emphasis added.]
"The Dawn Mining Company was recently licensed to haul 35 million cubic feet of this material from the East Coast to a huge pit at its closed uranium mine near Ford, Washington. The material will travel to Spokane by train, then be transferred to trucks for the trip to the final destination. The company says this will require about 40 very large trucks, with six to nine axles and weighing 93,000 pounds each when loaded. These trucks will travel over the back roads each day for 260 days a year for five to seven years."
Of course, this doesn't include the expense of maintaining the roads under this unplanned-for load and the cost of the statistically certain accidents that will result from 93,000 pound trucks travelling some 5 million miles. But if you weren't lucky enough to get this contract, don't fret. There are another 47 million cubic feet of this material at other locations across the country. While you won't be producing any beneficial health effects, nobody really cares... and it's just taxpayers' money.
Even our state officials charged with insuring the public health are rebelling against the EPA and other heavy-handed federal government intrusions that have the force of law. For example, the EPA limit on radium-226 in drinking water is 5 pCi/l (0.18 Bq/l). The average adult will consume about one liter of water per day. Is there any evidence that 6 pCi/l will harm you? Not a whit. Yet to remove the radium is an expensive proposition borne by the local citizenry for an arbitrary, bureaucratic caprice. [A South Carolina rural water district manager recently told me that one of their wells tested at 5.6 pCi/l, requiring special treatment at a cost of $30,000 per year to the customer base for that single well.]
What evidence is there concerning the harm of ingesting radium - in addition to the fact that people have been drinking the water for hundreds of years without ill effects?
There is good evidence of a death from radium about sixty years ago. But it wasn't from drinking water with 6 pCi/l.
In 1928, an eccentric millionaire, Eben Byers, was so enthusiastic about the invigorating qualities of a radium-based patent medicine that he partook of three to four vials per day of Radithor. Each vial contained 3,500,000 pCi of radium - a 1,918-year supply according to the EPA's limitations. He eventually died of his addiction after ingesting an estimated 10 billion pCi - a 5,480,000-year dose consumed in three years.
Eben isn't the whole story, however. There were 400,000 to 500,000 vials of Radithor sold with no indication that it caused any problems whatsoever. With what other "poison" can you consume 700,000 times the government-dictated maximum dose and still walk away... not once, but on a regular basis? Could the poison be in the dose?
While support for the LNT and collective dose is rapidly waning in light of the evidence brought forth by Luckey, Cohen, and a growing flood of researchers, there are still those who will (or perhaps feel they must) defend these hypotheses. Do they do so with evidence, such as dose-response curves? Not once have I seen low-level evidence showing increased risk - unless it was an extrapolation from high-level data. The response is invariably the same: It is better to err on the side of safety than to take any chances on the possibility of an increased cancer risk.
If you're building a bridge, it doesn't cost much to increase its safety factor; a little more steel and concrete will do the trick. But the same doesn't go when building an airplane, as too great an emphasis on structural safety factors would keep the airplane from ever getting airborne. Regulators and bureaucrats - who are willing to see nuclear technology and hormesis research stay on the ground rather than expend the effort required to give a proper analysis to the overwhelming amount of data pointing to the threshold/hormesis models - are doing a great disservice to those whom they claim to be safeguarding. Whenever any of them starts feeling complacent about their rules and how they might be helping to save some theoretical life somewhere, I wish they would think a few seconds about a number - the number 100,000.
That's the lower estimate of unborn children who were aborted out of a totally unreasonable fear of their being "nuclear monsters" [after Chernobyl]. I wonder if those (almost) mothers sacrificed any Mozarts or Madame Curies or Salks on the altar of the LNT?
Another appalling case reported by Rod Adams, editor of Atomic Energy Insights, involved a project used to blast out "contaminated soil" near the nuclear reactor at McMurdo Sound in Antarctica. Battling potentially lethal weather conditions, the task was completed at considerable risk to the workers and immense cost to taxpayers. So what was done with the offending material that may have caused a needed hormetic effect in the radiation-poor polar region? It was shipped (at another obscene cost to the taxpayers) to the United States, where it was used for parking lot fill in Port Hueneme, California.
Rather than trying to paraphrase the flowing and informative prose of Dr. Rockwell, here is a final example of government's mindless adherence to the Linear No-Threshold hypothesis - in his words:
"The question of whether tiny amounts of radiation must be avoided, even at great cost, is neither abstract nor trivial. Hundreds of billions of dollars are to be spent 'remediating' U.S. sites even though there is no scientific basis for claiming any health or other benefit. Worldwide, this cost has been estimated at more than a trillion dollars. [A more recent estimate, based on actual remediation projects, is $3 trillion worldwide, and $1 trillion for the United States alone. Using the figure of $20 million per life sacrificed, a trillion dollars is equal to 50,000 lives at the shrine of the Linear No-Threshold hypothesis.]
"This is in addition to the unquantifiable cost of lives lost by fear of mammograms, radioactive smoke detectors, irradiated food, or other beneficial uses of radiation. Most, if not all, of this cost would be saved if we did not try to reduce radiation levels below the natural radiation background, which is several hundred times lower than the lowest levels at which any health effects have been found."
Rockwell continues:
"But one person's wasted tax money is another's lucrative contract. Here's one example to remember. At some 46 sites in 14 states, there are some 82 million cubic feet of uranium tailings left over from the wartime weapons program. This material is what is left when you take as much uranium out of the natural ore as you can. It is now less radioactive than the original ore, and 20 times less radioactive than what the law calls "low-level waste." There is a lot of natural rock that is more radioactive. [Emphasis added.]
"The Dawn Mining Company was recently licensed to haul 35 million cubic feet of this material from the East Coast to a huge pit at its closed uranium mine near Ford, Washington. The material will travel to Spokane by train, then be transferred to trucks for the trip to the final destination. The company says this will require about 40 very large trucks, with six to nine axles and weighing 93,000 pounds each when loaded. These trucks will travel over the back roads each day for 260 days a year for five to seven years."
Of course, this doesn't include the expense of maintaining the roads under this unplanned-for load and the cost of the statistically certain accidents that will result from 93,000 pound trucks travelling some 5 million miles. But if you weren't lucky enough to get this contract, don't fret. There are another 47 million cubic feet of this material at other locations across the country. While you won't be producing any beneficial health effects, nobody really cares... and it's just taxpayers' money.
Even our state officials charged with insuring the public health are rebelling against the EPA and other heavy-handed federal government intrusions that have the force of law. For example, the EPA limit on radium-226 in drinking water is 5 pCi/l (0.18 Bq/l). The average adult will consume about one liter of water per day. Is there any evidence that 6 pCi/l will harm you? Not a whit. Yet to remove the radium is an expensive proposition borne by the local citizenry for an arbitrary, bureaucratic caprice. [A South Carolina rural water district manager recently told me that one of their wells tested at 5.6 pCi/l, requiring special treatment at a cost of $30,000 per year to the customer base for that single well.]
What evidence is there concerning the harm of ingesting radium - in addition to the fact that people have been drinking the water for hundreds of years without ill effects?
There is good evidence of a death from radium about sixty years ago. But it wasn't from drinking water with 6 pCi/l.
In 1928, an eccentric millionaire, Eben Byers, was so enthusiastic about the invigorating qualities of a radium-based patent medicine that he partook of three to four vials per day of Radithor. Each vial contained 3,500,000 pCi of radium - a 1,918-year supply according to the EPA's limitations. He eventually died of his addiction after ingesting an estimated 10 billion pCi - a 5,480,000-year dose consumed in three years.
Eben isn't the whole story, however. There were 400,000 to 500,000 vials of Radithor sold with no indication that it caused any problems whatsoever. With what other "poison" can you consume 700,000 times the government-dictated maximum dose and still walk away... not once, but on a regular basis? Could the poison be in the dose?
While support for the LNT and collective dose is rapidly waning in light of the evidence brought forth by Luckey, Cohen, and a growing flood of researchers, there are still those who will (or perhaps feel they must) defend these hypotheses. Do they do so with evidence, such as dose-response curves? Not once have I seen low-level evidence showing increased risk - unless it was an extrapolation from high-level data. The response is invariably the same: It is better to err on the side of safety than to take any chances on the possibility of an increased cancer risk.
If you're building a bridge, it doesn't cost much to increase its safety factor; a little more steel and concrete will do the trick. But the same doesn't go when building an airplane, as too great an emphasis on structural safety factors would keep the airplane from ever getting airborne. Regulators and bureaucrats - who are willing to see nuclear technology and hormesis research stay on the ground rather than expend the effort required to give a proper analysis to the overwhelming amount of data pointing to the threshold/hormesis models - are doing a great disservice to those whom they claim to be safeguarding. Whenever any of them starts feeling complacent about their rules and how they might be helping to save some theoretical life somewhere, I wish they would think a few seconds about a number - the number 100,000.
That's the lower estimate of unborn children who were aborted out of a totally unreasonable fear of their being "nuclear monsters" [after Chernobyl]. I wonder if those (almost) mothers sacrificed any Mozarts or Madame Curies or Salks on the altar of the LNT?
Monday, April 11, 2016
Where the Terrorists Have Already Won
In 1978, Jimmy Carter reneged on the opening of a reprocessing plant that was nearing completion in Barnwell, South Carolina. This facility was to take "spent" fuel rods from power reactors owned by the utilities, dissolve them in acid, then separate the uranium and plutonium from the contaminants that would "poison" and eventually stop the chain reaction. The highly radioactive progeny of the energy-producing reactions - amounting to some 1% or 2% of the volume - would be disposed of by any one of a number of perfectly safe methods. The fuel portion would then be reformed into uranium or "MOX" pellets for insertion into fuel assemblies.
Hold on. Could one infer from this that these "spent" fuel elements contain in excess of 90% of their intial fuel? Yes, one could. Is this what we plan to bury under Yucca Mountain? Precisely.
Does this make sense to you? It certainly doesn't to the English, French, Japanese, Russians, and others who think we are absolutely nuts for planning to bury unbelievable amounts of readily obtainable energy. But it made sense to the Carter administration, and even though Reagan reversed the decision, there were no corporate takers who were willing to risk their shareholders' money on a project that could be changed by the whim of a government with a history of caving in to the slightest pseudo-environmentalist pressure. And there would certainly be pressure - since, as we "know," all radiation is dangerous, since any gamma ray could cause cancer... even though the odds against it are 30 quadrillion to one.
What was the reason - excuse, really - that the Carter administration used to stop reprocessing? It was the threat of terrorism. Let's consider briefly the problems from the standpoint of terrorists who are planning a heist of plutonium, with which they intend to make a bomb.
Hold on. Could one infer from this that these "spent" fuel elements contain in excess of 90% of their intial fuel? Yes, one could. Is this what we plan to bury under Yucca Mountain? Precisely.
Does this make sense to you? It certainly doesn't to the English, French, Japanese, Russians, and others who think we are absolutely nuts for planning to bury unbelievable amounts of readily obtainable energy. But it made sense to the Carter administration, and even though Reagan reversed the decision, there were no corporate takers who were willing to risk their shareholders' money on a project that could be changed by the whim of a government with a history of caving in to the slightest pseudo-environmentalist pressure. And there would certainly be pressure - since, as we "know," all radiation is dangerous, since any gamma ray could cause cancer... even though the odds against it are 30 quadrillion to one.
What was the reason - excuse, really - that the Carter administration used to stop reprocessing? It was the threat of terrorism. Let's consider briefly the problems from the standpoint of terrorists who are planning a heist of plutonium, with which they intend to make a bomb.
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Remedial Acryonyms
There are a couple abbreviations used in Table 13 and/or Figure 32 that may need reminders. SMR stands for standardized mortality ratio and compares the death rate of a group in question with that of an age-adjusted population of peers. In this study, for instance, it is seen that the Nones group has an SMR of 1.00. This means it exactly corresponds with the general population data accumulated over many years by the U.S. Bureau of Vital Statistics - just what you might expect from so large a population sample.
You should remember that the SMR has nothing to do with the number of deaths from a particular risk - just the ratio of deaths in, say, nuclear plant workers to (divided by) the number of deaths expected in individuals of similar ages and backgrounds.
LHC stands for Lymphatic and Hematopoietic Cancer, which relates to cancers of the lymph nodes and the formation of blood in the body.
A fifth cancer category was not plotted with the rest of the data in Figure 32: the SMR for mesothelioma. Table 13 indicates that both exposed groups showed more than twice the mortality of the unexposed workers. The report suggests, however, that this high ratio was due to both a low (and therefore statistically inaccurate) number of deaths from this cause, and the exposure of both radiation worker groups to environments laden with amphibole fibers - the imported, dangerous form of asbestos. (Not to be confused with the benign chrysotile variety.)
You should remember that the SMR has nothing to do with the number of deaths from a particular risk - just the ratio of deaths in, say, nuclear plant workers to (divided by) the number of deaths expected in individuals of similar ages and backgrounds.
LHC stands for Lymphatic and Hematopoietic Cancer, which relates to cancers of the lymph nodes and the formation of blood in the body.
A fifth cancer category was not plotted with the rest of the data in Figure 32: the SMR for mesothelioma. Table 13 indicates that both exposed groups showed more than twice the mortality of the unexposed workers. The report suggests, however, that this high ratio was due to both a low (and therefore statistically inaccurate) number of deaths from this cause, and the exposure of both radiation worker groups to environments laden with amphibole fibers - the imported, dangerous form of asbestos. (Not to be confused with the benign chrysotile variety.)
Table
13
|
|||
Summary
of Mortality
|
|||
NW>5
|
NW<5
|
NNW
|
|
CAUSE OF DEATH
|
“Highs”
|
“Lows”
|
“Nones”
|
All
Causes
|
2,797
|
1,168
|
4,453
|
SMR
|
0.76
|
0.81
|
1.00
|
95% Confidence*
|
0.73, 0.79
|
0.76, 0.86
|
0.97, 1.03
|
Leukemia
|
21
|
4
|
29
|
SMR
|
0.91
|
0.42
|
0.97
|
95%
Confidence*
|
0.56, 01.39
|
0.11, 1.07
|
0.65, 1.39
|
LHC
|
50
|
13
|
29
|
SMR
|
0.82
|
0.53
|
1.10
|
95%
Confidence*
|
0.61, 1.08
|
0.28, 0.91
|
0.88, 1.37
|
Mesothelioma
|
18
|
8
|
10
|
SMR
|
5.49
|
6.14
|
2.54
|
95%
Confidence
|
3.03, 8.08
|
2.48, 11.33
|
1.16, 4.43
|
Lung
Cancer
|
237
|
98
|
306
|
SMR
|
1.07
|
1.11
|
1.15
|
95% Confidence*
|
0.94, 1.21
|
0.90, 1.35
|
1.02, 1.29
|
Source: Johns Hopkins Final Report,
Health Effects of Low-Level Radiation in Shipyard Workers, June 1991, Table
4.1, p. 344.
|
|||
*The use of 95% confidence limits is a
method to show the range of statistically possible values on either side of
the most probable value.
|
|||
Caption for Figure 32: Summary of Shipyard Workers' Mortality: Health Effects of Low-Level Radiation in Shipyard Workers. DOE Contract Number DE-AC02-79EV10095. The Johns Hopkins University, Department of Epidemiology, Baltimore, Md. Final Report. June, 1991.
Sunday, March 13, 2016
Take Two Cobalt 60s & Call Me in the Morning
If we really believed in the LNT, we would have to conclude that routine use of X-rays for medical purposes would cause 100,000 deaths each year. - Richard North, Alpha, 1997
Radiation and cancer are certainly strange bedfellows.
On the one hand there is a great deal of misplaced concern that the almost infinitesimally small emissions from nuclear power plants will cause widespread cancer and induce Farmer Jones's cow to give birth to two-headed calves. Yet when Farmer Jones contracts cancer (no doubt as a result of the power plant), one of the primary treatments is to destroy the cancer cells (which are unusually susceptible to radiation) with X-ray treatments or by implantation of radioactive "seeds" in the cancerous organ. And when Mrs. Farmer Jones has a hyperactive thyroid, she ingests enough iodine 131 to give her body 200 times the radiation dose - in about three weeks - that she receives over her lifetime from the natural background, to to mention the gamma radiation given to her good farmer husband from being next to him in bed. Furthermore, when little Billy Jones is found to have a fatal, inoperative brain tumor, the least invasive treatment is the "gamma knife" - a method of focusing 201 small gamma sources, which, individually, are too weak to cause any harm to anyone but the most fervent anti-nuke. Yet when they are concentrated on the offending growth together they have the power to vaporize it... and Billy goes home that afternoon completely cured. Is that a miracle or what?
However, we are not going to discuss this type of radiation therapy, since it involves the transfer of considerable amounts of energy to tissues - particularly tumors or cancers - in an attempt to destroy them or reduce their functionality. Instead, we will be concerned about the effects of comparatively tiny amounts of radiation whose purpose is to provoke the immune system into stepping up its action on the cellular level.
You may note in this chapter that virtually all of the current experimental activity mentioned is occurring in Japan, where the work of Dr. Luckey is revered - since, I suspect, it explains so much of what is happening to bomb survivors. But he Japanese have taken the matter much further, including hormetic augmentation of high-level therapies and measurement of the physiological reactions to radiation - including one that gives credence to an unusual treatment for arthritis that dates back to Roman times.
Radiation and cancer are certainly strange bedfellows.
On the one hand there is a great deal of misplaced concern that the almost infinitesimally small emissions from nuclear power plants will cause widespread cancer and induce Farmer Jones's cow to give birth to two-headed calves. Yet when Farmer Jones contracts cancer (no doubt as a result of the power plant), one of the primary treatments is to destroy the cancer cells (which are unusually susceptible to radiation) with X-ray treatments or by implantation of radioactive "seeds" in the cancerous organ. And when Mrs. Farmer Jones has a hyperactive thyroid, she ingests enough iodine 131 to give her body 200 times the radiation dose - in about three weeks - that she receives over her lifetime from the natural background, to to mention the gamma radiation given to her good farmer husband from being next to him in bed. Furthermore, when little Billy Jones is found to have a fatal, inoperative brain tumor, the least invasive treatment is the "gamma knife" - a method of focusing 201 small gamma sources, which, individually, are too weak to cause any harm to anyone but the most fervent anti-nuke. Yet when they are concentrated on the offending growth together they have the power to vaporize it... and Billy goes home that afternoon completely cured. Is that a miracle or what?
However, we are not going to discuss this type of radiation therapy, since it involves the transfer of considerable amounts of energy to tissues - particularly tumors or cancers - in an attempt to destroy them or reduce their functionality. Instead, we will be concerned about the effects of comparatively tiny amounts of radiation whose purpose is to provoke the immune system into stepping up its action on the cellular level.
You may note in this chapter that virtually all of the current experimental activity mentioned is occurring in Japan, where the work of Dr. Luckey is revered - since, I suspect, it explains so much of what is happening to bomb survivors. But he Japanese have taken the matter much further, including hormetic augmentation of high-level therapies and measurement of the physiological reactions to radiation - including one that gives credence to an unusual treatment for arthritis that dates back to Roman times.
Monday, February 22, 2016
Very Strange - But I Don't Make the Data; I Just Report Them
The next figure is about mice that were not subjected to radiation but who had fathers that had been exposed prior to becoming a mouse-parent. (Yes, I realize this may be sounding a little like Psychic Hotline.) Figure 12 shows the life span of unexposed mice who were fathered by mice (naturally) that had received 30, 70, 100 or 150 cGy of X-rays at sixteen weeks of age. (Irradiating the mother mice had no effect on the life span of their progeny.)
How do I explain such a phenomenon? I haven't the foggiest idea... and I don't think anyone else does either. But if there were a possibility I could add 20% - 40% to the life span of my child by exposing myself to 100 cGy of radiation, that wouldn't be much of a decision. It is questions like these that we should be setting the stage for future generations to answer. Instead we are planning how to waste some $1 trillion cleaning up "nuclear dumps" that are less radioactive than the natural soil in many parts of our world.
You're probably tiring of mousy data, and I said we'd get on to humans after a couple more reports on rodent experiments. We'll just breeze right through these and let you practice your mental conversion from cGys to rads or cSvs to mrems (they are all the same for the radiation in all these citations).
Caption for Figure 12: Life Span of Mice Whose Sires Were Irradiated Spaulding, J.F., Brooks, M., and McWilliams, P. Some effects of X irradiation in successive generations on an inbred and hybred [sic] population of mice. Genetics, 50(Suppl.), 1179, 1964. Also in Effects of ionizing radiation in reproduction, Carlson, W.D. and Gassner, R.X., eds., Pergamon Press, London, 1963.
How do I explain such a phenomenon? I haven't the foggiest idea... and I don't think anyone else does either. But if there were a possibility I could add 20% - 40% to the life span of my child by exposing myself to 100 cGy of radiation, that wouldn't be much of a decision. It is questions like these that we should be setting the stage for future generations to answer. Instead we are planning how to waste some $1 trillion cleaning up "nuclear dumps" that are less radioactive than the natural soil in many parts of our world.
You're probably tiring of mousy data, and I said we'd get on to humans after a couple more reports on rodent experiments. We'll just breeze right through these and let you practice your mental conversion from cGys to rads or cSvs to mrems (they are all the same for the radiation in all these citations).
- "The effect of neutron exposure [3.2 cGy-6.3 cGy] upon the combined sexes showed low doses decreased the natural incidence of all tumors." (emphasis added) [Meweissen, D.J. and Rust, J.H. Reticuloendotheial neoplasms in C57 black mice after fast neutron irradiation at low doses. US Atomic Energy Commission Conference 740930, Oak Ridge, 1976.]
- Mice exposed to 150,000 mrem at five and twelve days following infection with "friend [sic] virus" recovered while all of the controls died within forty days. [Shen, R.N., Hornback, N.D., Lu, I., Chan, L.T., Drahms, Z., and Droxmeyer, H.E., Low dose total body irradiation; a potent antiviral agent in vivo. International Journal of Radiation Oncology and Biological Physics, 10, 185, 1989.]
- "[Studies on mice] in the dose range 0-3 Gy by two independent research groups at Oak Ridge and at Casaccio near Rome leads, for gamma radiation and X-rays, to a statistically significant decrease of the cancer rate at low doses and therefore to biphasic relationships for tumors of the reticular tissue, for several solid tumors, as well as for cancer as a whole." (emphasis in the original) [Weber, K. Biphasic dose-effect relationships in experimental studies of radiation cancer in animals. [English summary.] Strahlenbiologie und Strahlenshutz, Hannover. October 1996. IRPA, Progress in Radiation Protection.]
- "Male mice exposed to acute doses of 2 Gy for 82 successive generations showed no abnormal offspring; this acute dose is equivalent to 50 times background radiation for humans from the time of the Roman Empire to present." [Spaulding, J.F., Brooks, M., and McWilliams, P. Some effects of X irradiation in successive generations on an inbred and hybred [sic] population of mice. Genetics, 50(Suppl.), 1179, 1964. Also in Effects of ionizing radiation in reproduction, Carlson, W.D. and Gassner, R.X., eds., Pergamon Press, London, 1963.]
- "Urinary testosterone of chronically irradiated mice, 5,000 to 10,000 mrem of X-rays per day, was increased 264% above controls." (Look out, Viagra.) [Liu, S.Z. Effects of low dose ionizing radiation on defense and adaptive mechanisms. Conference on High Background Area Research, Taishan, Nov 1988; China Medical Journal, 102, 750, 1989.]
- Of the offspring of 124 male mice exposed to 276,000 mrem of X-rays and 124 control mice, 20 of 3,990 pumps from exposed males were stillborn, as compared to 45 of 3,418 control pups. [Luning, K. Studies of irradiated mouse populations. Hereditas, 46m 668, 1960.]
- In an experiment involving 3,505 autopsied mice with acute exposures of 18 cGy or more, the age-specific lymphocytic lymphoma rate was 16% of controls for 36 cGy exposures and 3% for those exposed to 18 cGy. [Meweissen, D.J., Rust, J.H., Harem, J., and Clement, M.J. Assessment of dose-response relationships in carcinogenesis following low radiation dosage. In Late effects of ionizing radiation. International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, 1978, 291.]
- Radio-resistance - the resistance to high levels of radiation exposure - in mice was enhanced by previous exposure to lower levels of X-rays. Survival of mice exposed to 700,000 mrem increased from 10% in the control group to 25%, 50%, and 82% for exposures to 120,000 mrem at one, two and three weeks of age, respectively. [Kochanski, W., et al. Immunologic analysis of the condition of increased resistance of organisms exposed to ionizing radiation. Medical Radiology, (Moscow) 1, 43, 1956. (Hmm, why would they have been interested in such a subject?)]
- Mice that had been exposed - from weaning through breeding - to 1 cGy/day had shorter generation times and higher birth rates that unexposed controls. (A later experiment on "deer mice" by the same researchers gave similar results.) [French, N.R. and Kaaz, H.W. The intrinsic rate of increase of irradiated Peromyscus in the laboratory. Ecology, 49, 1172, 1968.]
- "For newborn mice exposed to 180 rad at 0.07 R/day, the life span was significantly longer than it was for controls. At all dose levels the 2-month age group lived significantly longer than did the median controls." [Patterson, H. Wade, editor of the Health Physics Journal, elucidating experimental data by Spalding, J.F., Thomas, R.G., and Tiejen, G.L. in Life Span of C57 Mice as Influenced by Radiation Dose, Dose Rate and Age at Exposure, Report No. UC-48; LA-9528, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 1982.]
- "Male AKR mice were irradiated with 5 cGy three times a week or 15 cGy two times a week for 11 weeks from age 40 weeks. The incidence of thymic lymphoma was 80.6% in sham-irradiated mice [controls], 67.5% in mice irradiated with 5 cGy three times a week, and 48.6% in mice irradiated with 15 cGy twice a week." [Ishii, K. and Watanabe, M. Participation of gap-junctional cell communication on the adaptive response in human-cells induced by low-dose of X-rays. International Journal of Radiation Biology, Vol. 69, Issue 3, 1996.]
***
Gee, I could go on about mice for hours... unfortunately I wouldn't have any readers. So let's move on to the evidence that alerted so many people to the truth of Dr. Luckey's claim of radiation hormesis: the Japanese survivors and their stubborn refusal to die on the LNT schedule.
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Effects of Radiation on Cancer - Leukemia Mortality
Of the myriad varieties of cancer, leukemia is most often considered to be associated with exposure to ionizing radiation, so we'll look at it, first, in an experiment involving 1,000 young adult mice per group (about 12,000 mice in all), which were exposed to a single dose of gamma radiation from 20 to 600 cGy at the rate of 300 cGy (300 rad) per minute. (Ouch.) This experiment was directed by J.R. Maisin and reported in Radiation Research, 113, 300, 1988 (see Figure 7). To realize just how far apart the Linear No-Threshold Theory and the hormesis model are from one another, the LNT predicts a 60% increase in leukemia at an exposure of 200 cGy, while the actual data show a 35% decrease. One can argue all day the beauty of the LNT and how it is a terrific standard for regulatory control; but these data show that it just isn't true when compared to experiment.
Caption for Figure 7: Leukemia Mortality in Mice: Source: Maisin, J.R., Wambersie, A., Gerber, G.B., Mattelin, G., Lambert-Collier, M., and Guelette, J., Life shortening and disease incidence in C57BL mice after single and fractionated gamma and high energy neutron exposure. Radiation Research, 113, 300, 1988.
Caption for Figure 7: Leukemia Mortality in Mice: Source: Maisin, J.R., Wambersie, A., Gerber, G.B., Mattelin, G., Lambert-Collier, M., and Guelette, J., Life shortening and disease incidence in C57BL mice after single and fractionated gamma and high energy neutron exposure. Radiation Research, 113, 300, 1988.
Thursday, February 11, 2016
Rummaging Through the Stacks
Where the radiation level is greater, cancer risk is invariably less. [Nambi and Soman. Further observations on environmental radiation and cancer in India, Health Physics, submitted in 1990, unpublished.]
Presenting the evidence of radiation hormesis has been the most daunting problem faced in writing this book; there is just too much of it. Luckey had more than 2,000 citations in his two books, and he estimates that this was about half of the data available in 1990. [Hormesis with Ionizing Radiation, CRC Press, Boca Raton, 1980; and Radiation Hormesis, CRC Press, Boca Raton, 1991.]
In the fifteen years since then, other researchers have become involved, and their research compounds the problem of "too much" evidence. Until of late there had been only a very few experiments designed to address the radiation hormesis hypothesis, and most of these involved non-vertebrates. [Even more rare are subambient (i.e., less than normal background) radiation experiments, which should show a degradation of biologic function when the target microbes are shielded from cosmic and other background sources. Two such experiments are described in Radiation Hormesis, pp. 211-23.]
The data available - which are the backbone of the argument I'm putting forth [While I have absolutely no reason to distrust the recent test reports that attest to the hormesis phenomenon, there is something very satisfying about examining data taken without any conceivable bias toward "the reverse effect." If there were any bias it was to ignore that which didn't fit the curve.] - are generally one of the following types:
It would be wonderful if there were carefully controlled experimental data on humans for all diseases over the complete radiation dosage range. To optimize the hormesis effect, it would be marvelous to have double-blind studies over long periods of time, with carefully controlled exposures and rates. But we don't have these things.
Presenting the evidence of radiation hormesis has been the most daunting problem faced in writing this book; there is just too much of it. Luckey had more than 2,000 citations in his two books, and he estimates that this was about half of the data available in 1990. [Hormesis with Ionizing Radiation, CRC Press, Boca Raton, 1980; and Radiation Hormesis, CRC Press, Boca Raton, 1991.]
In the fifteen years since then, other researchers have become involved, and their research compounds the problem of "too much" evidence. Until of late there had been only a very few experiments designed to address the radiation hormesis hypothesis, and most of these involved non-vertebrates. [Even more rare are subambient (i.e., less than normal background) radiation experiments, which should show a degradation of biologic function when the target microbes are shielded from cosmic and other background sources. Two such experiments are described in Radiation Hormesis, pp. 211-23.]
The data available - which are the backbone of the argument I'm putting forth [While I have absolutely no reason to distrust the recent test reports that attest to the hormesis phenomenon, there is something very satisfying about examining data taken without any conceivable bias toward "the reverse effect." If there were any bias it was to ignore that which didn't fit the curve.] - are generally one of the following types:
- Animal tests designed to find adverse effects of high levels of ionizing radiation but which happened to take measurements in the low-dose area in the course of the experiment; [According to Luckey, much of the low-dose data - which showed negative correlation of the dose-response relationship - was either ignored, omitted or simply deemed too unimportant to report.]
- Japanese bombing survivors who were within a known distance of A-bomb detonations and whose exposures could be calculated; [There is considerable controversy about exposures, particularly in Hiroshima, with many researchers believing the data analysis understates the radiation dosage. One problem is related to some data still not being available to investigators - even after more than fifty years!]
- Statistical evidence on workers in nuclear power plants and weapons manufacturing facilities; and
- Populations that live in various areas with background radiation up to eighty times the U.S. average.
It would be wonderful if there were carefully controlled experimental data on humans for all diseases over the complete radiation dosage range. To optimize the hormesis effect, it would be marvelous to have double-blind studies over long periods of time, with carefully controlled exposures and rates. But we don't have these things.
Friday, February 5, 2016
Chernobyl - Symbol of Unconcerned Totalitarianism
One can hardly compare the Chernobyl fire in the Ukraine to the alleged "Three Mile Island disaster" in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Thirty-one firement and plant workers were killed in the former, while the only victims at TMI were from media-caused anxiety. Volumes have been written by analysts on the mistakes made a both power plants. But Chernobyl, with its graphite reactor designed to produce weapons-grade plutonium as well as electricity - and with no containment building - cannot even be compared with the pressurized water reactor (PWR) at TMI in which the nuclear reaction is stopped by the laws of physics when there is a loss of coolant water. Of course that hasn't stopped the anti-nuclear, anti-technologists from trying. But perhaps the strangest story out of Chernobyl was that the Soviet hierarchy, who had strongly supported the anti-nuclear activists in the United States, were apparently led to believe their own propaganda about radiation dangers.
The accident at Chernobyl provided both good and bad news for anti-nuclear activists. For decades, they had been attempting to come up with some reasonable way that radioactive products from nuclear power plants could be spread over the countryside. The best they'd been able to come up with for U.S. power plants went like this:
(a) A loss-of-coolant accident occurs, and the emergency core cooling systems fail to operate, leading to a meltdown of the fuel assemblies inside the reactor.
(b) Although the nuclear reaction stops when the coolant is lost (the water acts as a moderator to slow down the neutrons so they can be captured and allow the reaction to continue), there is still heat generated from the decay of the "daughters" of the reaction. This is supposedly so intense that it melts through six inches of steel in the reactor vessel, and continues through many feet of high-strength, reinforced concrete.
(c) But it can't stop there. The molten mass must then continue to melt through perhaps a few hundred feet of earth until reaching an aquifer. There the steam generated causes "blow holes" to develop, and the steam carries the radioactive products back to the surface. (Hold on, we're almost there.)
(d) The weather must cooperate with a gentle breeze blowing toward a populated area. (Too much wind and our "cloud" dissipates; under calm conditions, the product settles to the earth at the facility and is taken care of there.)
But the graphite fire at Chernobyl provided an actual way that about 90 million curies of radioactive material could be efficiently spread around the countryside. Yes, the anti-nukes got their dream of a large scale nuclear disaster - which had been becoming more and more difficult to conjure up, given the fact that Three Mile Island showed that the uncovered fuel elements couldn't even melt through the reactor vessel.
But there was bad news for them also. There weren't any bodies on the streets. Aside from those who died on-site, mostly firemen who expired from burns with possibly complications from radiation, there is no sign of a cancer epidemic or any other chronic problems.
Oh, sorry, there's one. The governments involved are going broke (broker?) from the payments they are making to victims. Victims? Didn't I just say there weren't any victims? Yes, but I meant from the radiation. The victims as defined by the governments involved are those who were traumatized by fear of radiation or from the trauma of being evicted from their homes and forced into refugee camps.
Of the radionuclides escaping from the burning graphite reactor at Chernobyl, the one of most concern was cesium 137. A gamma emitter with a half-life of thirty years, this reactor product settled to Earth over much of Europe. Yes sir, it did. But nobody seemed to notice it settled right on top of soil that already contained naturally occurring radioisotopes such as U238, Th232, and K40. In a mistaken spirit of humanitarianism, the Soviet Army evacuated its citizens when the dose from the Earth exceeded 0.5 cGy (500 mrad) per year. [One of the purposes of this book is to show how some authorities - even nuclear officials - have no connection with reality and, indeed, make recommendations and rules that cause great harm. This example shows nationality is no barrier.]
They apparently didn't notice they were already sitting on "highly radioactive" dirt. Figure 5 shows the Chernobyl contamination relative to naturally occurring radiation. Is it any wonder that the "Project Team's Main Recommendations" included the following?
"Measures with less impact on traditional agriculture should be investigated; better public information is needed, particularly on doses and risks, and studies of the acceptability to people of living in contaminated areas." [Emphasis added.]
Table 11 – Chernobyl Cs 137 Burden in Various Areas
vs. Natural Background
|
|
Location
|
Range (Bq/m^2)
|
European Cs 137 contamination outside
former USSR
|
20,000 to 23,000
|
Cs 137 contamination inside former
USSR
|
40,000 to 5,000,000
|
Natural radionuclides in soil of above
areas
|
177,000 to 6,500,000
|
Source: Table 2 in 1997 statement by
U.N. Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) member
Zbigniew Jaworowski
|
|
Table 11 gives another look at the Cs 137 "fallout" and the natural radionuclides in the top 10 cm (about four inches) of soil in several locations around Chernobyl. Note the range of natural soil radiation. Wouldn't you think that someone would have noticed a variation in the detrimental effects of natural radiation when some areas had thirty-six times the soil radioisotopes of others - if indeed there were any detrimental effects? Would you think one area would be known as Cancervania - because of regular affliction of the populace from radiation, while another area would go by Vitalia, because of superior health derived from a dearth of radiation exposure? But we don't see Europe having such disparities in cancer or other immune disorders on the basis of location, do we?
Well, actually we do: the health resorts are almost always located on springs with a high radon content.
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Getting a Handle on Radiation Doses
How many atomic explosions in our cities would you accept before deciding that nuclear power is not safe - no complexities, just a number? - Ralph Nader, 1974
A significant source of confusion regarding the measurement of radiation parameters is the simultaneous use of two systems of units. As noted in chapter 7, "activity" is measured in curies in the USA system and Becquerels in the International System of units. A similar duality is found in the measurement of "doses" of radiation, as will be discussed in this chapter.
The question arises as to which units should be used in this book. Personally, I think in terms of the USA units and find that most people actively involved in radiation related disciplines in the United States do likewise. On the other hand, most scientific papers are written using the S.I. values - certainly all the recent ones on hormesis.
Since neither way will satisfy all readers, it will be the policy herein to use both in the next few chapters - generally the S.I. units followed by the USA units in parenthesis unless a quotation or other source is expressed in the USA units... in which case the S.I. units are given parenthetically. Hopefully this repetition will get you accustomed to both systems of units and the relationship between them. Later chapters will use the same units as found in the source material. The plan is for you to become familiar with both by then and to make any necessary conversions in your head. (Or refer to Table 6 on page 51 or to Table 7, coming up on page 56, another good place for a bookmark.)
We will start with the more familiar (at least to me) USA units.
A significant source of confusion regarding the measurement of radiation parameters is the simultaneous use of two systems of units. As noted in chapter 7, "activity" is measured in curies in the USA system and Becquerels in the International System of units. A similar duality is found in the measurement of "doses" of radiation, as will be discussed in this chapter.
The question arises as to which units should be used in this book. Personally, I think in terms of the USA units and find that most people actively involved in radiation related disciplines in the United States do likewise. On the other hand, most scientific papers are written using the S.I. values - certainly all the recent ones on hormesis.
Since neither way will satisfy all readers, it will be the policy herein to use both in the next few chapters - generally the S.I. units followed by the USA units in parenthesis unless a quotation or other source is expressed in the USA units... in which case the S.I. units are given parenthetically. Hopefully this repetition will get you accustomed to both systems of units and the relationship between them. Later chapters will use the same units as found in the source material. The plan is for you to become familiar with both by then and to make any necessary conversions in your head. (Or refer to Table 6 on page 51 or to Table 7, coming up on page 56, another good place for a bookmark.)
We will start with the more familiar (at least to me) USA units.
Saturday, January 16, 2016
Before Going on to Radiation ...
Let's look at some common examples of where we see hormesis in humans.
We'll be going on shortly to the specifics of radiation hormesis, but first, classes on the basics of ionizing radiation are getting underway in the next chapter.
- Vitamins and trace minerals clearly show the difference a dose makes. Arsenic and selenium were considered (and are) deadly poisons; but they have been found to be necessary nutrients.
- Some sunlight is necessary for production of vitamin D in the body, but too much leads to localized cancers, and in extreme cases, death.
- Some noises (such as waves) can be soothing and healthful, while long exposure to loud noises can cause mental confusion and loss of hearing function.
- Most athletes are well aware of "no pain, no gain"; too much pain, however, equals ruptured muscles, torn ligaments, and broken bones.
- Lack of stress in one's life (e.g., a deadline to complete a project) tends to make an individual lethargic, while too much stress can cause permanent physical and mental harm.
We'll be going on shortly to the specifics of radiation hormesis, but first, classes on the basics of ionizing radiation are getting underway in the next chapter.
Sunday, January 10, 2016
The Radiation Death Toll
The total number of people known (or suspected by me) to have been killed directly by exposure to radiation is:
A total of fifty-eight have died, or may have died, from direct exposure to radiation in about the same number of years with a world average population of around 4 billion. Five of these were members of the "general public." I may have missed a few, but the point is that, statistically, death from direct exposure to radiation is about as likely as death from the bite of a rabid cow.
What if we were to confront an anti-nuclear activist from the grossly misnamed "Union of Concerned Scientists" or the Sierra Club with this statistic? Would they deny it? Oh, maybe they would say that a fisherman on another boat at another time was a fallout victim, but in general this would not be of any concern to them. What would be important to them is the number of deaths that occurred "that we don't know about but are scientifically calculated."
- One fisherman killed by bomb-test fallout
- Twenty-two killed in criticality accidents
- Four killed in Goia, Brazil
- Thirty-one murdered by the Soviets (yes, I do have a grudge)
A total of fifty-eight have died, or may have died, from direct exposure to radiation in about the same number of years with a world average population of around 4 billion. Five of these were members of the "general public." I may have missed a few, but the point is that, statistically, death from direct exposure to radiation is about as likely as death from the bite of a rabid cow.
What if we were to confront an anti-nuclear activist from the grossly misnamed "Union of Concerned Scientists" or the Sierra Club with this statistic? Would they deny it? Oh, maybe they would say that a fisherman on another boat at another time was a fallout victim, but in general this would not be of any concern to them. What would be important to them is the number of deaths that occurred "that we don't know about but are scientifically calculated."
Saturday, January 9, 2016
Unclean!
On September 13, 1987, two thieves entered an abandoned clinic in Goiania, State of Goia, Brazil, and dismantled a machine used for radiation therapy. From it they took a stainless steel cylinder, which they broke apart with a sledge hammer an then sawed open a one-cubic-ince capsule filled with a glittering powder - cesium 137... 1,250 curies of it. Children in the junkyard began to play with it, and the workers took some home with them. Two weeks later, four people died, one was to have his arm amputated, and several skin grafting operations were required for those having had intimate contact with the highly radioactive isotope.
Four deaths from fire, traffic or a trench collapsing might have been totally overlooked by the news. But death by radiation is our modern-day leprosy. Fear of radioactive contamination caused the wholesale value of the entire agricultural production of the state to fall by 50%. Vacationers, afraid of the "invisible killer," cancelled 40% of the hotel rooms booked for the tourist season; conventions were moved to other states or called off. Hotels in other parts of the country refused to register Goians, while airline pilots and taxi drivers denied them transportation. Cars with Goiania license plates were stoned.
Of the 125,000 individuals who insisted on a Geiger scan, 8.3% showed signs of acute stress (extreme anxiety, rashes, vomiting, diarrhea) from fear - yet not one was found contaminated. The funeral of the first victim had to be delayed while police stopped the stoning and removed barricades at the cemetery. Where did this paralyzing fear of radiation come from? I would suspect that the Goian newspapers printed stories similar to those noted in Bernard Cohen's table of New York Times stories, resulting in similar attitudes toward the dangers of radiation.
Four deaths from fire, traffic or a trench collapsing might have been totally overlooked by the news. But death by radiation is our modern-day leprosy. Fear of radioactive contamination caused the wholesale value of the entire agricultural production of the state to fall by 50%. Vacationers, afraid of the "invisible killer," cancelled 40% of the hotel rooms booked for the tourist season; conventions were moved to other states or called off. Hotels in other parts of the country refused to register Goians, while airline pilots and taxi drivers denied them transportation. Cars with Goiania license plates were stoned.
Of the 125,000 individuals who insisted on a Geiger scan, 8.3% showed signs of acute stress (extreme anxiety, rashes, vomiting, diarrhea) from fear - yet not one was found contaminated. The funeral of the first victim had to be delayed while police stopped the stoning and removed barricades at the cemetery. Where did this paralyzing fear of radiation come from? I would suspect that the Goian newspapers printed stories similar to those noted in Bernard Cohen's table of New York Times stories, resulting in similar attitudes toward the dangers of radiation.
Thursday, January 7, 2016
A "Media Created" Fear?
Dr. Bernard Cohen - who was group leader for cyclotron research at Oak Ridge about the same time I was researching my toes in the shoe store X-ray machine - had noticed a disparity between the deaths and injuries from radioactivity accidents and the media's concern over this danger. So, like the researcher he is, he obtained the number of entries in the New York Times Information Bank for the years 1974-1978 for various types of accidents and the death toll resulting from them. [Bernard Cohen, The Nuclear Energy Option, Plenum Press, New York, 1990, pp. 58-59.] (This avoided the Three Mile Island "disaster," which would have made the situation look much more ridiculous than it already does.) His data looked like Table 1.
Table 1: News Stories on Deaths from Various Causes [Source: New York Times Information Bank, 1974-1978.]
This table reminded me of two news stories I read less than a month apart some years ago, both of which reported more than twenty deaths in two separate geothermal well accidents in South America. Do you remember them? Or the dozens killed in refinery accidents and pipe line accidents? How about the 100 people that are killed each year from being hit by trains carrying coal for power generation? I guess those people are not as important as the people who didn't lose their lives in nuclear accidents.
Table 1: News Stories on Deaths from Various Causes [Source: New York Times Information Bank, 1974-1978.]
News Stories
|
Deaths per Year
|
In Previous Decade
|
|
Auto accidents
|
120
|
50,000
|
500,000
|
Industrial accidents
|
50
|
12,000
|
120,000
|
Asphyxiation accidents
|
20
|
4,500
|
45,000
|
Radiation accidents
|
200
|
0
|
0
|
This table reminded me of two news stories I read less than a month apart some years ago, both of which reported more than twenty deaths in two separate geothermal well accidents in South America. Do you remember them? Or the dozens killed in refinery accidents and pipe line accidents? How about the 100 people that are killed each year from being hit by trains carrying coal for power generation? I guess those people are not as important as the people who didn't lose their lives in nuclear accidents.
Wednesday, January 6, 2016
Radiation: Fear Versus Reality
Some observers believe there will be a million people with direct and backup assignments to guard the nuclear industry by the year 2000. - Ralph Nader, 1975
Most people believe that radiation - the kind that comes from nuclear power plants - is not only dangerous, but cumulatively so. A little now, a bit more later - it all adds up with life-threatening consequences. We have been convinced over many years that all radiation has the ability to cause cancer, and the more we get of it, the more likely we are to develop the disease. There is also a prevalent idea that radiation causes mutations in humans because of its damage to our DNA. (This will also be shown to be false, even when the radiation levels are very high, as in the Japanese cities bombed at the end of World War II.)
So how did we come to "know" these things? Where did we get our fear of radiation? That's an interesting question.
It's not one of those innate fears like the fear of heights or growling animals. How could we be born with a fear of something we can't feel, smell, see or otherwise sense?
It's not something your parents taught you. Did your mother ever say, "Darling, be sure to look both ways when you cross the street, and watch out for gamma rays"?
I suggest that our fear of radiation comes from two sources. First is its invisibility and lack of any kind of "early warning" altering us to a dangerous presence. If gamma radiation were seen as purple flashing lights, we could see its presence and avoid it, much as many of us must do to prevent being sunburned. In this way radiation is similar to the plague and other scary germ-borne diseases: We tend to fear any kind of invisible killer - as well we should. Being rational beings, however, we don't stay inside under oxygen tents because the Ebola virus is active in Africa or because a Nile virus-bearing mosquito might be in the neighborhood. We make a "risk versus benefit" analysis in order to live a normal life, and we save our irrationality for radiation.
The second reason is an almost total lack of knowledge of radiation, how it is measured, and its effects at various levels. The common knowledge is that all radiation is dangerous, period. Most science textbooks don't add much, if anything, to this dearth of knowledge. Typically there will be a picture of a nuclear plant with a caption reading: "Concrete and steel walls four to five feet thick protect workers from deadly radiation." If we were to see a newspaper article stating that "Mrs. Jones is wearing a special protective suit to ward off the poison darts," we would rush to the next paragraph to find out what kind of darts? How many? How poisonous? Where are they coming from? But as regards nuclear "darts," we just nod our heads and think, "Well, all radiation is dangerous."
Most people believe that radiation - the kind that comes from nuclear power plants - is not only dangerous, but cumulatively so. A little now, a bit more later - it all adds up with life-threatening consequences. We have been convinced over many years that all radiation has the ability to cause cancer, and the more we get of it, the more likely we are to develop the disease. There is also a prevalent idea that radiation causes mutations in humans because of its damage to our DNA. (This will also be shown to be false, even when the radiation levels are very high, as in the Japanese cities bombed at the end of World War II.)
So how did we come to "know" these things? Where did we get our fear of radiation? That's an interesting question.
It's not one of those innate fears like the fear of heights or growling animals. How could we be born with a fear of something we can't feel, smell, see or otherwise sense?
It's not something your parents taught you. Did your mother ever say, "Darling, be sure to look both ways when you cross the street, and watch out for gamma rays"?
I suggest that our fear of radiation comes from two sources. First is its invisibility and lack of any kind of "early warning" altering us to a dangerous presence. If gamma radiation were seen as purple flashing lights, we could see its presence and avoid it, much as many of us must do to prevent being sunburned. In this way radiation is similar to the plague and other scary germ-borne diseases: We tend to fear any kind of invisible killer - as well we should. Being rational beings, however, we don't stay inside under oxygen tents because the Ebola virus is active in Africa or because a Nile virus-bearing mosquito might be in the neighborhood. We make a "risk versus benefit" analysis in order to live a normal life, and we save our irrationality for radiation.
The second reason is an almost total lack of knowledge of radiation, how it is measured, and its effects at various levels. The common knowledge is that all radiation is dangerous, period. Most science textbooks don't add much, if anything, to this dearth of knowledge. Typically there will be a picture of a nuclear plant with a caption reading: "Concrete and steel walls four to five feet thick protect workers from deadly radiation." If we were to see a newspaper article stating that "Mrs. Jones is wearing a special protective suit to ward off the poison darts," we would rush to the next paragraph to find out what kind of darts? How many? How poisonous? Where are they coming from? But as regards nuclear "darts," we just nod our heads and think, "Well, all radiation is dangerous."
Monday, January 4, 2016
Because They Say So, That's Why
The U.S. government plans to spend $85 billion (about $1,000 per U.S. family) in cleaning up a single radioactive site at Hanford, Washington - not to avoid the searing radiation analogous to falling 100 feet, but to escape the almost imperceptible disturbance from falling less than two-tenths of an inch. In terms of our SXR units, the Hanford reservation area (if you can find it in the Easter Washington desert) has an annual "excessive" exposure of far less than 1 SXR, while it would take well over 6,000 SXR units to be fatal - and that would have to occur in a relatively short time or it might well be bio-positive. Alas long suffering taxpayers, I'm sorry to tell you that this is only one of four similar locations!
To these mega-clean-ups, you'll want to add the high cost of reducing the negligible emissions of nuclear plants, the counter-productive recommendations for reducing radon levels in homes, and last but not least - Yucca Mountain, the Federal government's potential (maybe some day in the future) high-level waste disposal site. In a move rivaling the building of Mayan pyramids to have a swell place to sacrifice virgins, Yucca Mountain is perhaps the greatest government boondoggle in U.S. history. Here we are spending billions of dollars to study outlandish fictions of (a) major climate changes bringing unprecedented rainfall to the desert where (b) the fictitious rain infiltrates through hundreds of feet of rock ordinarily considered impervious, to (c) dissolve stainless steel containers that hold the waste products after which they (d) seep through thousands of feet of rock into an isolated aquifer, into which (e) deep wells will be drilled that are impossible to drill without modern equipment, and (f) the water will be drunk by some unknown people who have modern drilling equipment, but no knowledge of any potential radiation danger. And that's the reasonable part of the Yucca Mountain story.
What is totally unreasonable is the contention that the so-called wastes would be harmful to anybody after 10,000 years no matter how they were eaten, drunk, sniffed, snorted, mainlined or whatever. Nuclear medicine therapies routinely involve millions of times any conceivable exposure from this nuclear "seep-out." Government-paid, regulatory-agency-entrenched "scientists" are bewailing a potential tragedy caused by "high level" wastes that, in 600 to 1,000 years, will be less radioactive than the ores from which they came!
In addition to the wasting of taxpayer money - which we'll get back to in later chapters - the LNT theory has created irrational and unwarranted fears in citizens, causing them needless worry over their essential medical X-rays, tricking them into believing that irradiated foods are dangerous, and even causing unnecessary concern about 30,000 delayed cancer deaths predicted for their European relatives resulting from Chernobyl... which, incidentally, will most likely never happen, but wouldn't be detectable if they did.
[Evidence is (as you will see) that there should be a decrease in the death rate in the higher ambient radiation areas. But, probably, we'll never be able to detect it. There would normally be approximately 25 million cancer deaths (plus or minus a few million) in the affected area. Thirty thousand additional would amount to a change of 0.1% - statistically undetectable. In the United States, cancer rates vary by about 50% between Utah (low) and the District of Columbia (high).]
To these mega-clean-ups, you'll want to add the high cost of reducing the negligible emissions of nuclear plants, the counter-productive recommendations for reducing radon levels in homes, and last but not least - Yucca Mountain, the Federal government's potential (maybe some day in the future) high-level waste disposal site. In a move rivaling the building of Mayan pyramids to have a swell place to sacrifice virgins, Yucca Mountain is perhaps the greatest government boondoggle in U.S. history. Here we are spending billions of dollars to study outlandish fictions of (a) major climate changes bringing unprecedented rainfall to the desert where (b) the fictitious rain infiltrates through hundreds of feet of rock ordinarily considered impervious, to (c) dissolve stainless steel containers that hold the waste products after which they (d) seep through thousands of feet of rock into an isolated aquifer, into which (e) deep wells will be drilled that are impossible to drill without modern equipment, and (f) the water will be drunk by some unknown people who have modern drilling equipment, but no knowledge of any potential radiation danger. And that's the reasonable part of the Yucca Mountain story.
What is totally unreasonable is the contention that the so-called wastes would be harmful to anybody after 10,000 years no matter how they were eaten, drunk, sniffed, snorted, mainlined or whatever. Nuclear medicine therapies routinely involve millions of times any conceivable exposure from this nuclear "seep-out." Government-paid, regulatory-agency-entrenched "scientists" are bewailing a potential tragedy caused by "high level" wastes that, in 600 to 1,000 years, will be less radioactive than the ores from which they came!
In addition to the wasting of taxpayer money - which we'll get back to in later chapters - the LNT theory has created irrational and unwarranted fears in citizens, causing them needless worry over their essential medical X-rays, tricking them into believing that irradiated foods are dangerous, and even causing unnecessary concern about 30,000 delayed cancer deaths predicted for their European relatives resulting from Chernobyl... which, incidentally, will most likely never happen, but wouldn't be detectable if they did.
[Evidence is (as you will see) that there should be a decrease in the death rate in the higher ambient radiation areas. But, probably, we'll never be able to detect it. There would normally be approximately 25 million cancer deaths (plus or minus a few million) in the affected area. Thirty thousand additional would amount to a change of 0.1% - statistically undetectable. In the United States, cancer rates vary by about 50% between Utah (low) and the District of Columbia (high).]
Saturday, January 2, 2016
Collective Dose
You are not going to believe a concept that has guided our radiation-protection formulators for the past forty or fifty years. But, as my hero Dave Barry would say, "I am not making this up." It's called collective dose, and it works like this: If 100 aspirins are a fatal dose for an individual, then when 100 people take one aspirin each, they have had a "collective dose" of 100 aspirins - therefore one of them is going to die. This is the reason you see all these dead people scattered all over the landscape... aspirin COD (Collective Over Dose).
It is this exact concept that has governed regulators in developing the "collective dose" policy that, in tandem with the LNT theory, has contributed to the regulatory madness of the EPA and NRC.
Since I suspect you still must think I'm putting you on about "collective dose," allow me to refer to page 10 in this very large, impressive volume on my desk - The Health Physics and Radiological Health Handbook (Revised Edition) [Shielen, Bernard, ed., Scinta, Inc., Silver Spring, MD 1992.] It shows the "Global Collective Dose" of carbon-14 released by the nuclear power industry to be 18,000 "person-Sieverts" - a collective dose measurement unit. What does that mean? It tells us that of the 6 billion people on earth exposed to these airborne emissions, 4.5 of them will die from the effects of carbon-14 emitted from nuclear power plants. How have we learned about these tragic deaths? Well, we know (from collective dose theory) that 4,000 person-Sieverts causes one excess death. So somewhere, some four and a half people on our terrestrial ball are going to die from this carbon-14 released from more than 440 power reactors.
Gee, could that be what did my grandmother in?
The average exposure here is less than 0.00003 SXR - an infinitesimally small amount, equivalent to a few minutes of normal background radiation. Yet, we are told that we should have faith in this unproven and unprovable theory - and to spend millions of our tax (or utility bill) dollars to save these 4.5 unfortunates who would otherwise be keeling over from this blast of searing radiation.
It is this exact concept that has governed regulators in developing the "collective dose" policy that, in tandem with the LNT theory, has contributed to the regulatory madness of the EPA and NRC.
Since I suspect you still must think I'm putting you on about "collective dose," allow me to refer to page 10 in this very large, impressive volume on my desk - The Health Physics and Radiological Health Handbook (Revised Edition) [Shielen, Bernard, ed., Scinta, Inc., Silver Spring, MD 1992.] It shows the "Global Collective Dose" of carbon-14 released by the nuclear power industry to be 18,000 "person-Sieverts" - a collective dose measurement unit. What does that mean? It tells us that of the 6 billion people on earth exposed to these airborne emissions, 4.5 of them will die from the effects of carbon-14 emitted from nuclear power plants. How have we learned about these tragic deaths? Well, we know (from collective dose theory) that 4,000 person-Sieverts causes one excess death. So somewhere, some four and a half people on our terrestrial ball are going to die from this carbon-14 released from more than 440 power reactors.
Gee, could that be what did my grandmother in?
The average exposure here is less than 0.00003 SXR - an infinitesimally small amount, equivalent to a few minutes of normal background radiation. Yet, we are told that we should have faith in this unproven and unprovable theory - and to spend millions of our tax (or utility bill) dollars to save these 4.5 unfortunates who would otherwise be keeling over from this blast of searing radiation.
Friday, January 1, 2016
Three Mile Island Reunion
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