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.)

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.

Radio-Resistance in Mice Previously Exposed to Hormetic Levels

We are aware that inoculations strengthen the immune system by mildly stressing it and causing antibodies to arise that fight any further intrusion of a similar type of invader. In effect, vaccinations are examples of hormesis: Small doses of poison are stimulatory. The poison in this case is a virus, not an inorganic toxin. Hans Seyle (chapter 4) doesn't care what it is. As long as it stresses the host organism, it starts an alarm reaction that stimulates a defense mechanism.

If radiation hormesis is a valid concept, we might expect small doses of radiation to ward off the bio-negative effects of higher doses - obviously not through the creation of antibodies but by some currently unknown mechanism. Figure 11 illustrates just such a phenomenon.

In this 1990 experiment by M. Yonezawa et al. [Yonezawa, M., Takeda, A., and Misonoh, J. Acquired radioresistance after low-dose x-irradiation in mice. Journal of Radiation Research, 31, 256, 1990], mice were irradiated with a low dose of X-rays (50 cGy or 50,000 mrad) two weeks before a second potentially lethal dose of 740 cGy (740,000 mrad). The survival rates of the irradiated group were compared with the unexposed controls. There isn't much question as to which mouse group I'd want to line up with on "innoculation day."

Table 8 (in chapter 8 - or see below) shows the dose-response for humans is similar to that which Yonezawa finds for mice - at 700 mrem, we're both dead or close to it. Would humans have a similar radio-resistance response? We don't know and aren't likely to until the knee-jerk reaction to anything nuclear is abated by scrapping the LNT. If I were a nuclear worker - involved in changing fuel elements where high-level (but so far, nonfatal) accidents have occurred, or an astronaut potentially subjected to a cosmic radiation barrage, or perhaps a soldier with the potential for high-level exposure from a neutron bomb, I think I'd want someone to look into the radio-resistance phenomenon who wasn't committed to the LNT hypothesis and likely to state at the outset, "All radiation is harmful - and it's our job to keep you from having any."

Table 8 – Acute Radiation Syndrome
Subclinical Range 0 – 100 rads		Therapeutic Range 100 – 500 rads			Lethal Range 500+ rads
		100 – 200	200 – 300	300 – 500	500 – 2000	2000+
Appropriate Action	None	Clinical surveillance	Therapy effective	Therapy promising	Therapy palliative (comfort patient only)
Incidence of Vomiting	None	100 rads: 5% 200 rads: 50%	75%	75%	100%	100%
Delay Time	n/a	3 hours	2 hours	1 hour	3 min.	3 min.
Main Organs Affected	None	Blood Forming Tissue			Gastro-intestinal Tract	Central Nervous System
Characteristic Signs	None	White Blood Cell Decrease	Fatigue, infection, erythema, sterilization, loss of hair above 300 rads, hemorrhage		Diarrhea, fever, electrolyte imbalance, bleeding	Convulsion, coma, loss of muscle control, lethargy, tremors
Critical Period	n/a	n/a	4 – 6 weeks		5 – 14 days	1 – 48 hours
Post-exposure Therapy	Assure of Safety	Blood analysis; assure of safety	Blood transfusion; anti-biotics	Possible bone marrow transplant	Maintain electrolyte balance	Sedatives
Outlook	Excellent	Excellent	Good	Guarded	Hopeless	Hopeless
Convalescent Period	None	Several weeks	1 – 2 months	Long	n/a	n/a
Death Rate	None	None	0% - 40%	40% - 100%	90% - 100%	100%
Death Within	n/a	n/a	2 – 4 weeks		2 weeks	2 days
Cause of Death	n/a	n/a	Hemorrhage, infection		Dehydration	Respiratory failure; heart attack

Parlez-Vous Radiation?

Using lower exposures than the Lorenz and Sacher experiments, a study by French researchers documented the effect of 900 mice - 300 controls, 300 receiving a chronic gamma ray dose at the rate of 7 cGy/year, and 300 exposed similarly to 14 cGy/year. [Caratero, A., Courtade, M., Bonnet, L., Planel, H., and Caratero, C. Effect of a continuous gamma irradiation at a very low dose on the life span of mice. Gerontology, 44, 272-76, 1998. These exposures are twenty-three to forty-six times the U.S. background level.]

Quoting from the abstracted results of the Gerontology article:

"The life span, after the beginning of the experiment, determined by the survival time of 50% of each population, is increased in irradiated mice: 549 in controls, 673 days in both irradiated groups. The differences are significant between the control and the irradiation mice. Differences between mice irradiated with 7 or 14 cGy are not significant."

So what did the researchers conclude?

"These results confirm the possibility of a non-harmful effect (hormesis) of ionizing radiation. They demonstrate that the paradigm, which states that low-dose effects can be predicted [by] high-dose effects, cannot be systematically applied in radiation biology in general and gerontology in particular."

Doesn't sound like there's much vacillation here, does it?

Before moving on to evidence on two-footed subjects, there are a couple of other unusual mouse studies that merit consideration.

Effects of Radiation on the Life Span of Mice

Surely if ionizing radiation has beneficial effects on growth rate and the immune system competence of mice, as evidenced by a decreased susceptibility to cancer, it ought to have a positive effect on life span. As several studies demonstrate, this is indeed the case.

A 1983 investigation by J.B. Storer [Storer, J.B., et al. Life shortening [sic] in Balb/C mice following brief protracted, and fractionated exposures to neutrons. Radiation Research, 96, 396, 1983] was cited by Luckey as an example of how hormesis effects are often overlooked by researchers who are expected a bio-negative response from radiation. [Radiation Hormesis, 1981, pp 46, 50.]

The authors ignored a peaking of longevity between 5 and 10 cGy, hopefully not in any attempt to be fraudulent or unethical, but probably because it would have appeared anomalous in terms of the LNT.

It is an earlier study [Sacher, G.A. and Grahn, G. Survival of mice under duration-of-life exposure to gamma rays. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 32, 277, 1964] - which most certainly gave unintended results - that is of considerable interest to hormesis researchers. Life spans of mice - 90 in a control group, and 90 to 120 in four exposed groups - are plotted in Figure 10 on the basis of daily exposures to cobalt-60 gamma radiation. Exposures, which began 100 days after birth, were continued until the death of the specimen.

Caption for Figure 10 Life Span for Irradiated Mice  Source: Sacher, G.A., and Grahn, G. Survival of mice under duration-of-life exposure to gamma rays. I. The dosage-survival relation and lethality function. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 32, 277, 1964; also ANL Report 6971, 1964, p 94.

Anti-nuclear activists, "animal rightists," and "popular wisdom" would predict dire consequences for test animals subjected to such huge doses of radiation every day of their lives. But this study offers substantial evidence that mice receiving 1,000 times their normal background dose had the longest life spans. [It is my understanding that similar results were reported by a researcher named Searle in 1964, but I have not been able to obtain any more information.] You might recall that, in the earlier discussion of growth rate, the optimum was also 1,000 times normal background.

Effects of Radiation on Cancer in Mice - Lung Cancer Mortality

There are three studies that address the effects of ionizing radiation on lung cancer mortality in mice. The most recent of these was a 1997 experiment by Y. Hosoi and K. Sakamoto [Suppression of spontaneous and artificial tumors by low dose total body irradiation in mice. In Low Doses of Ionizing Radiation: Biological Effects and Regulatory Control, Atomic Energy Agency, TECDOC-976, Vienna, 1997] in which mice were injected with artificial metastases (a fancy medical term for cancer cells) and then irradiated with gamma rays up to 100 cGy (100,000 mrad). Data showed the lowest cancer rate in a range between 15 and 40 cGy, with the minimum being 41% of controls at 15 cGy.

The Hosoi-Sakamoto study demonstrated another tenet of the hormesis theory, however, which most other experimenters have neglected to investigate - namely that hormesis is a property of the organism and not its individual cells. When tumor cells that had been irradiated with 10 to 50 cGy gamma rays in vitro were injected in the mice, there was no difference from the controls - indicating that the suppression affects the mouse, not tumor cells. Unfortunately, the study involved only 200 - 250 mice (perhaps they are scarce in Japan?) and lacks the statistical significance I would like to see for compelling evidence.

Both of the lung cancer experiments were performed by Ullich et al., whom we have seen laboring earlier with mouse pituitaries; and both experiments involved several thousand mice. His 1977 investigation [Ullrich, R.L., et al. Neutron carcinogenesis. Dose and dose-rate effects in BALB.C mice. Radiation Research, 72, 487, 1977], which showed a minimum lung cancer mortality in the area of 100 cSv, was repeated in 1979 [Ullrich, R.L., et al. Influence of irradiation on the development of neoplastic disease in mice. Radiation Research, 80, 135, 1979]. This time, instead of only two data points, six were examined from 10 to 300 cSv. As shown in Figure 9, the minimum appeared around 25 cSv in the 1979 data but was still significantly lower than controls even at the 100 cSv level.

At the risk of sounding repetitive, it is evident that the LNT is completely inadequate to explain this phenomenon, while the hormesis theory predicts just such an occurrence.

Caption for Figure 9 Lung Cancer Mortality in Mice Source: Ullrich, R.L., Jernigan, M.C., and Storer, J.B. Neutron carcinogenesis. Dose and dose-rate effects in BALB/C Mice, Radiation Research, 72, 487, 1977. Also Ullrich, R.L., and Storer, J.B. Influence of irradiation on the development of neoplastic disease in mice. I. Reticular tissue tumors. II. Solid tumor. III. Dose-rate effects. Radiation Research, 80, 135, 1979.

Effects of Radiation on Pituitary Cancer Mortality

In 1979, R.L. Ullrich et al. compared the pituitary cancer mortality rate of 400 female mice exposed to single doses of 10, 25, 50 and 100 cGy. [Ullrich, R.L. et al. Influence of radiation on the development of neoplastic disease in mice. Radiation Research, 80, 135, 1979.]

The normal mortality from this cancer in the control mice was 6.6% - a value that was set as the 100% or control level on Figure 8.

Caption for Figure 8: Pituitary Cancer in Mice: Source: Ullrich, R.L. and Storer, J.B., Influence of radiation on the development of neoplastic disease in mice. Radiation Research, 80, 135, 1979. (For similar studies by Ullrich et al., see also Radiation Research, 68, 115, 1976, and several other case studies in this chapter.)

As shown, pituitary cancer mortality was decreased nearly 20% at an exposure of 25 cGy, which was similar to results for ovarian cancer (20% decrease), mammary cancer (46% decrease), and uterine cancer (13% decrease). Needless to say, these are not the kind (or even the direction) of results predicted by the LNT.

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.

Growth Rate of Irradiated Mice

In a 1954 study by E. Lorenz et al. on the "effects of long-continued total body gamma irradiation on mice, guinea pigs, and rabbits," it was found that the growth rate of mice increased in proportion to the exposure, up to the level of 1.0 cGy (1,000 mrad) per day. [Lorenz, Egon, et al. Effects of long-continued total body gamma irradiation on mice, Guinea pigs and rabbits, in Biological Effects of External X and Gamma Radiation, Vol. 1, Zirkle, R. E., ed., McGraw-Hill, New York, 1954.]

Above this point, as shown in Figure 6, the growth rate decreased, until it was the same as the control group at approximately 7.5 cGy per day. Irradiation, which lasted eight hours per day, commenced one month after birth and continued until death. This study did not, however, examine the question of the relative longevity of the mice involved - a subject taken up later in this chapter.

[Caption for Figure 6: Growth Rate of Irradiated Mice - Note: "Control" or "Controls" refers to a group of unexposed animals often as large as the entire exposed cohort. The average behavior of this group is the norm to which all other groups are compared. Source: Lorenz, E., Jacobson, L.O., Heston, W.E., Shimkkin, M., Eschenbrenner, A.B., Deringer, M.K., Doniger, J., and Schweistal, R., Effects of long-continued total body gamma irradiation on mice, Guinea pigs, and rabbits. III. Effects on life span, weight, blood pressure and carcinogenesis and role of intensity of radiation. In Biological Effects of External X and Gamma Radiation, Vol. 1, Zirkle, R. E., ed., McGraw-Hill, New York, 1954.]

The size advantage (considered "healthy" in mice, though probably not popular in Minnie's ballerina class) continued into late maturity - about 100 weeks.

If we consider the background level to be the U.S. average of 0.3 cSv or 300 mrem per year (about 1 mrem per day) [the dose, expressed in units of energy per mass, is independent of the size of the recipient], then the fastest-growing rodents received about 1,000 times their normal background radiation - hardly in keeping with the LNT - which would predict unhealthiness at any level above background. It strongly suggests beneficial radiation effects are at work.

Who's the Leader of the Gang...

Irradiation of the pregnant animals - and the foetuses in utero caused an astonishing decrease of the mortality rate of the infected baby mice. [Mayr and Paulas, Unexpected effects of a whole body irradiation on the mortality rate of baby mice after an experimental infection with the vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), Zentralbl. Veterinaermed, 36, 577, 1989.]

As a rule, I don't think much of animal experiments. No, I'm not a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA); in fact, I think many test animals (that would have never existed were it not for testing requirements) have it a whole lot better than their cousins who live in the wild. Can you th ink of anything worse than being a mouse that is in the process of being swallowed whole by a snake? And besides not having to be constantly on the lookout for snakes, cats, and hawks, some of these test critters have a pretty active social life - especially those involved in reproductive studies.

My problem with much of the animal testing is similar to the problem I have with the LNT - it is based on extrapolation with no consideration of a possible (and likely) threshold. For example, cancer researchers will load up some rat - which has been bred for a propensity to have tumors - with the human equivalent of two boxcars per day of an artificial sweetener, and then declare the substance to be a human carcinogen when a few tumors appear. No consideration is given to the possibility that there is a threshold, above which the rat's resistance is overwhelmed, but below which there is no effect.

Fortunately, mouse experiments related to disproving the LNT and demonstrating hormesis are not in this category. A single datum point on the accompanying graphs is often the average of hundreds of mouse lifetimes, and the curves subsequently drawn lie within the range of these experimental data so that no extrapolation is necessary. Besides most of the tested mice should be happy campers, since ionizing radiation in the hormesis range generally promotes health and longevity.

This chapter will look into the effects of low-level (and a few not so low-level) X-rays and gamma radiation on the mice. Most of it is related to cancer, sinc, as we are aware, this disease is commonly associated with radiation and is, in fact, the major detrimental effect of exposure. Other topics include growth rate, life span, radio-resistance (which all parents of teenagers should have), and one inexplicable effect of radiation received by the parents of the test mice.

In the following studies, exposures (rads/Gy) and doses (rems/Sv) are equal, since only gamma and X-ray radiation are involved.

Battling the Bureaucracy

I'd suggest that the only way to change country A's regulators would be for the citizens of A to understand the evidence and know the evidence proves the regulators are wrong; that their regulations are costing lives, not saving them; that the tax money of the citizens is being wasted on nonsensical programs to reduce radiation levels that are already insignificant; and that people and industries are being denied the benefits of nuclear technology because bureaucrats feel a responsibility to "enforce official policy" rather than question, observe and reason.

So, I submit, it is up to us to look at the evidence - of which the following is just a small fraction - and then, with reason and eloquence, persuade our political leaders to lead. Failing that, we should work to throw the blackguards out, and help elect those who will listen to reason - and not to the anti-technologists who would return us to the days of manure, a boring subsistence, and back-breaking labor.

In Luckey's Radiation Hormesis, the source of much of the evidence to be offered in the upcoming chapters, the subject matter was arranged in terms of parameters that were being observed, e.g., fertility, growth rate, immunity, mortality, cancer risk, life span. Subjects of the studies ranged from bacteria to fish eggs, to mice, to beagles, to humans - with each interspersed within the observed parameters. The information presented is technical, quite detailed, and frankly - because I tend to faint when reading italicized Latin words of more than two syllables - can be a bit difficult to understand. But that's what we engineers were put on Earth for: to attempt conversion of scientists' ideas into something normal people can fathom.

For this reason I've concentrated on, and am limiting the data to, studies on mice and men. Mice, because the experiments are with statistically significant numbers of specimens bred to minimize genetic differences - and men (women, too) because of a hunch that readers will be interested in that particular species. Additional details on these and related subjects can be found on the Radiation, Science and Health website at http://cnts.wip.edu/rsh.

Upcoming chapters have the following content:

• Chapter 14: Data from mice experiments concerning responses, such as longevity and various cancer mortalities, to a wide range of exposures
• Chapter 15: Observations and data from A-bomb survivors
• Chapter 16: Radiation effects on workers in nuclear power plants and nuclear-weapons facilities
• Chapter 17: Effects of different levels of background radiation on residents in different geographical areas
• Chapter 18: Some hormetic effects seen in medical treatment statistics
• Chapter 19: A huge study of nuclear-shipyard workers by Johns Hopkins University
• Chapter 20: An even bigger study by Bernard Cohen of the effects of residential radon in the United States. You may have been a participant in the study, as it covered 90% of U.S. residents in more than 1,700 counties.

Hopefully, one or more of these topics will be helpful in your evaluation of the experimental basis of hormesis - or, as United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) puts it - "the adaptive response to radiation in cells and organisms."

Coming, Mother...

This is where evaluation of the evidence by an informed and sensible citizenry comes into play. As matters stand now, we have a "nanny" government that dictates what is good for us and what is not. The government regulators who determine the "rules" usually do so in a manner that will make them popular with those they think are important - it's a process called politics. And almost every "rule" they make has a single stated purpose: to protect us from something, someone or ourselves. If our FDA had been around in Edward Jenner's 1796 England, how many people would have died from smallpox waiting for a bureaucracy to approve vaccinations?

With regard to our subject matter, a presentation by a Canadian regulatory official offers a case in point [at the 1998 Ottawa Conference on Low-Dose Radiation]. The radiation exposure regulators are well aware of the eventual demise of the LNT and the strong evidence that low-level radiation is beneficial. These are not "bad" or conspiratorial activists who want to destroy Canada. But will they consider relaxing the already miniscule limits (5 mSv or 500 mrem) for public exposure to radiation? Will they adopt a policy raising limits for hormesis studies? Absolutely not! They intend to lower the limit even further to 1 mSv (100 mrem)!

Because of a clear and present danger? Not at all. It is because of political pressure from the "all-radiation-is-dangerous" crowd and the eagerness on the part of the regulators to avoid a confrontation with the politically powerful "green lobby." What, pray tell, would it take for the regulators to change their minds and look at the evidence? (I copied this one down verbatim.) They will not consider changing "without the other worldwide regulatory agencies agreeing to adopt it [the less stringent regulations]."

Let's see now, if country A won't change until B, C and D have changed; and country B won't change until A, C and D have changed... gee, it doesn't seem like there's going to be a whole lot of changing going on.

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:

• 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.

A Parting Shot in the Radon Controversy

Since it affects only air passageways and the lungs, radon and its progeny do not really give us a "whole body dose" like most of the other radiation sources that provide our background dose. Its contribution of 55% of our natural background is therefore given as an "equivalent whole body dose" calculated from the 2,400 mrem dose given yearly to the bronchial epithelium times an "effective dose equivalent factor" of 0.08. This calculated dose of about 200 mrem (0.2 cGy) is tied to the LNT and might make sense if the linear theory were true - which it is not. In my opinion, the BEIR data on radon and its effects are worse than meaningless. They are unscientific, fraudulent and meaningless.

Bane of the EPA

In 1990, the first of Bernard Cohen's studies was published showing that higher household radon levels were associated with lower lung cancer rates. The wealth of evidence rocked the scientific community, most of whom had never bothered to question the Linear-No-Threshold model. They were to be even further "rocked" by his even more comprehensive report in 1995. He is still [2005] evaluating even the most unlikely confounding possibilities that might discredit his highly significant findings. As a seeker of scientific truth, Cohen is working diligently to prove himself wrong.

The evidence chapters of this book contain many references to radon, including a whole chapter on Cohen's study (chapter 20). It might be a good idea for you to read them prior to spending big bucks for a government-approved, radon-reducing heat exchanger, which allowed circulation without appreciably changing the temperature of the room air.

Whom to Believe?

Gasteiner Heilstollen

Spas in the Bad Gastein area of Austria have been known for their health benefits since Roman times - while the U.S. EPA didn't discover radon as a threat until 1984. Note that the level in the "healing gallery" is 1,000 times the "fix it" level of the EPA.

*************************** THIS ***************************

In the Healing Gallery in Gastein deep down in the Radhaus Mountain, there is a worldwide unique healing climate to be found: Because of the air, which contains radon and temperatures of 37 to 41.5 degrees, and a relatively high humidity of between 70 and 100%, your body will refill itself naturally with vitality and strength. Muscles and joints relax as the mountain gives out new energy.

The Healing Gallery is Gastein is the most effective treatment method in Gastein and is probably the most effective natural healing method for treating rheumatic illnesses.

The Natural Healing Power:

• High radon content (up to 4.5 NanoCurie per litre of air in the Gallery)
• Damp warmth (air temperature ranges from 37-41.5 degrees Celsius and relatively high air humidity of 70/100%).
• Speleotherapy conditions (completely pure, dust free, allergy free, and practically bacteria free air, healing aerosol, negative ions)

[above copy taken from http://www.gastein.com/en-gesundheit-heilstollen.shtml]

************************* OR THIS *************************

EPA Recommends:

• If you are buying a home or selling your home, have it tested for radon.
• For new homes, ask if radon resistant construction feature(s) have been used.
• Fix the home if radon level is 4 picocuries per liter (pCi/L) or higher.
• Radon levels less than 4 pCi/L still pose a risk, and in many cases may be reduced.
• Take steps to prevent device interference when conducting a radon test.

[above copy taken from www.epa.gov/iaq/radon/pubs/hmbyguid.html]

Home Is Where the Radiation Is

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

From Table 11, radon is apparently the dominant source of background radiation. As pointed out earlier, it has not always been considered to be such, as residential radon seems not to have existed until December 1984, when a nuclear worker set off radiation alarms on his way into the Pennsylvania Limerick power plant. A subsequent investigation showed that the residential radon level in the Reading Prong area of Pennsylvania and New Jersey exceeded the level found in many mines. Always quick with a horror story, the EPA "found" this new "danger" to millions of citizens and gleefully reported that as many as 20,000 lung cancer deaths in the United States are caused by residential radon. Perhaps someone at the EPA should have been reading a certain $36 per year newsletter.

Petr Beckmann was well aware of this noble gas situation, as evidenced by 106 different mentions of radon in his newsletter Access to Energy from September 1979 through June 1992. [Now edited by Dr. Arthur Robinson, President and Research Professor, Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, Box 1250, Cave Junction, OR 97523. Back issues, twenty-one-year CD-ROM, and index available.]

Professor Beckmann was wise enough not to condemn the radon levels out of hand, but he took the bureaucrats to task for their double standard: One hand of government was tightening industrial radioactive emission standards to ridiculously low levels, while the other hand was encouraging/demanding that homeowners modify their homes to the point where radon doses to the average citizen were hundreds - if not thousands - of times greater than the levels dictated to nuclear workers. Here is an example from the November 1983 edition of his newsletter - prior to the EPA's "discovery" of residential radon:

"Although radon exposures of the public are regularly hundreds and even thousands of times higher than from nuclear power operations, that alone may not be cause for alarm. Our purpose here is not to scare readers with the dangers of radon, but to point out the inconsistency of the media and of the politicians bent on pleasing them."

When it came to radon, one might ask about the government's myopia for so many years. Well, one might also remember that during this period we were having one of our regularly scheduled energy crises and were being urged to seal up our residences and commercial buildings. (Anyone born before 1960 should surely remember Carter's "thermostat cops.") Without ventilation, the heavy gas, almost eight times heavier than air, seeps into basements or lower floors with additional amounts coming from unvented or poorly vented natural-gas heaters. There appears to have been a contest between which "crisis" was more important - energy or radiation. Energy shortage was first out of the gate, but it's radiation coming down the homestretch.

Radon: Scourge or Blessing for Mankind?

Government was tightening industrial radioactive emission standards to ridiculously low levels, while demanding that homeowners modify their homes to the point where radon doses to the average citizen were hundreds of times greater than the levels dictated to nuclear workers.

Radon is the heaviest of the "noble gases," so named because it - like its cousins neon, argon, krypton, and xenon - does not react with other elements to form compounds. It is radon's "nobility" that minimizes its effects on the body, since it is mostly a transient that is breathed in and then expelled without any chemical reaction taking place. When radon decays in the body, however, it spawns a series of short half-life progeny that are not only chemically reactive with tissue, but are - as we would suspect from their half-lives - also highly radioactive.

[When uranium decays (which isn't very often with a half-life of 4.5 billion years), the products of the decay go through four more stages (taking a couple of million years) until radium is formed. With a half-life of 1,600 years, radium 226 decays into radon gas with a half-life of 3.8 days. The daughters of radon are polonium 218, lead 214, bismuth 214, polonium 214 - and a couple of others. The aforementioned have very short half-lives and are therefore highly radioactive.]

Hazard to Miners?

For years, radon has been thought to be a hazard to miners, and a special confusing unit of activity - the Working Level (WL) - was derived to measure the danger. [One WL is the activity of air containing 100 pCi (3.7 Bq) of radon in equilibrium with its daughters (which, by the way, virtually never happens in the real world) per liter of air. For an approximation, a Working Level Month (WLM) is equivalent to a one-time whole body dose of about 300 mrem (0.3 cGy).]

Recently, however, as evidence of radiation hormesis has emerged, the jury is back out to deliberate a reconsideration of radon's guilt. It is now recognized that other carcinogens - in particular, the particulates suspended in the air of all mines and, more recently, the fumes from diesel engines - were present, but never considered. Radon was assumed to be the carcinogenic culprit, a theory that appears now to be based on flimsy circumstantial and anecdotal evidence.

A related re-evaluation of lung cancer in the Joachimsthal mining community [a famous mine in Czechoslovakia] noted that victims were invariably "pensioners," i.e. miners (not their unexposed, above-ground cohorts) who had made it to a retirement age, which was about ten years longer than their life expectancy. One might easily speculate that the cancer was caused by microscopic dust lodged in the lungs, and the miners' long lives a beneficial product of radon gas. [One of Europe's most famous health spas is Bad Gastein near Salzburg, Austria, which advertises "air with the highest radon content in Europe." The activity of its water is noted in Table 6, in this blog's entry on Monday, January 25, "Specific Activities."]

There has also been a piece of the puzzle right under our noses.

Radon gives its dose of mixed radiation primarily to the bronchial epithelium (fancy scientific words for "windpipe"), hence one would expect cancers caused by radon to be concentrated in this area. Au contraire! The miners' cancers are deep in the lungs [Nobel Laureate Rosalyn Yalow, Radiation and Society, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 16, 4, 1991], similar to the cancers caused by the South African amphibole-type asbestos [not to be confused with the common, domestic serpentine type of asbestos, which has not been shown to cause disease], used in ships because of its resistance to brine, acids, and oils.

It is difficult not to see the parallel between non-degradable asbestos fibers in the lungs and non-soluble silica particulates found in most mining environments.

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.