All of these studies reference externally received radiation and do not address the very different situation of radionuclides becoming incorporated or lodged into living tissue. What is the long term effect of a radionuclide – radiating the same cluster of cells immediately adjacent to it in body tissue over the period of time which the radionuclide is lodged or incorporated into that specific location.
It is not enough to consider the external dosage received from external sources – e.g. an X-ray device or being in the vicinity of a emitting source. One has to consider each radionuclide by itself. What is the radionuclides bio-availability, can it become incorporated into living tissue (like for example Strontium-90, which can become incorporated into living bone tissue getting uptake by the bodies calcium uptake channels.) One would probably be relatively safe sleeping over a small lump of cellophane wrapped plutonium for example (would not recommend this though LOL) as long as there was some barrier, but a single minute particle of that plutonium lodged into say lung tissue would be a very serious matter indeed. You cannot get an accurate risk profile for radioactive materials without separately, considering the risk that nano or micro scale form factor radionuclides pose for living organisms when these become ingested (through breathing, drinking, eating) and either lodged into living tissue (say lung tissue or the web of small capillaries of the kidneys for example) to then begin to continuously radiate a single small region for long durations of time. Focusing only on studies that measure the long term effects of low doses from external sources fail to cover this kind of effect. Chris From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John Clark Sent: Saturday, July 05, 2014 10:53 AM To: [email protected] Subject: How dangerous is radiation? Everybody agrees that huge amounts of radiation are harmful or fatal, especially if received virtually instantaneously as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but do more moderate amounts received much more slowly really increase the likelihood of getting cancer and death years later? All our public policy regarding nuclear power is based on the assumption that the answer is yes, in particular it is assumed that the linear no threshold (LNT) theory is correct. But is it? If death rates were always linear and it was known that there was a 50% chance that when people were hit in the head with a 3 pound iron ball moving at 20 mph they would die then if a million people were hit in the head with a iron ball 6000 times less massive you’d expect about 83 people to die, but in actuality a .008 ounce BB moving at 20 mph wouldn’t even break the skin and nobody would die. It doesn’t work for iron balls but is the LNT theory correct for radiation? For obvious ethical reasons there isn't a lot of data on this subject but there is some. The natural background radiation of the Rocky Mountain states in the USA is 3.2 times higher than in the Gulf States, and yet the cancer death rate in the Gulf States is 1.26 times HIGHER than in the Rocky Mountain states. Radiologists spend their lives exposed to X rays, but they have less cancer and a lower death rate than other physicians. People who became radiologists between 1955 and 1970 had a 29% lower cancer rate and a 32% lower death rate than non-radiologist physicians. In 1983 steel bars used in the construction of 180 apartment buildings in Taiwan were accidentally contaminated with Cobalt 60, it took about a decade for this to be discovered and in the meantime 10,000 people were exposed and some residents received as much as 500 millisieverts per year, the average was 50; by comparison the natural background level is only 3.3 millisieverts. In a group of people that large you’d expect that 232 would die from cancer by now, and if the LNT theory is true you’d expect 70 additional would die due to the excess radiation, so there should have been 302 deaths from cancer; but the astonishing thing is that only 7 people died of cancer. In addition the LNT theory predicts there should have been 46 birth defects, but the actual number was 3. A study was done on 71,000 people who were shipyard workers between 1957 and 1981, they were divided into 3 categories, a high dose group received more than 0.5 rem, a low dose group that received less than that, and a control group of shipyard workers that didn’t work on nuclear ships and so received no excess radiation. Actuarial studies show that the high radiation group had a 25% LOWER death rate than the control no radiation group; the low radiation group had a bigger death rate than the high radiation group but it was still lower than the zero radiation control group of shipyard workers. These results are the exact opposite of what the LNT theory predicts and incredibly it seems to indicate that modest amounts of radiation received over a long period of time can actually be beneficial. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
