'This continues the series of general reports on mortality in the cohort of atomic bomb survivors followed up by the Radiation Effects Research Foundation. This cohort includes 86,572 people with individual dose estimates ... There have been 9,335 deaths from solid cancer and 31,881 deaths from noncancer diseases during the 47-year follow-up. ... We estimate that about 440 (5%) of the solid cancer deaths and 250 (0.8%) of the noncancer deaths were associated with the radiation exposure [emphasis added]. ... a new finding is that relative risks decline with increasing attained age, as well as being highest for those exposed as children as noted previously. A useful representative value is that for those exposed at age 30 the solid cancer risk is elevated by 47% per sievert at age 70. ... There is no direct evidence of radiation effects for doses less than about 0.5 Sv [emphasis added; notice that this report considers 86,572 people with individual dose estimates, and 40% have doses below 5 mSv or 0.005 Sv, so the politically expedient so-called 'lack of evidence' is actually a fact backed up by one hell of a lot of evidence that there are no radiation effects at low doses, a fact the biased scare-story-selling media and corrupt politically-expedient politicians will never report!].' - D. L. Preston, Y. Shimizu, D. A. Pierce, A. Suyama, and K. Mabuchi, 'Studies of mortality of atomic bomb survivors. Report 13: Solid cancer and noncancer disease mortality: 1950-1997', Radiation Research, volume 160, issue 2, pp. 381-407 (2003).
Above: what is being politically covered up in the latest reports by the Radiation Effects Research Foundation. D. A. Pierce and D. L. Preston (Radiation Effects Research Foundation, Hijiyama Park, Hiroshima) wrote in 'Radiation-related cancer risks at low doses among atomic bomb survivors', Radiation Research, volume 154, issue 2. pp. 178-86 (August 2000): 'To clarify the information in the Radiation Effects Research Foundation data regarding cancer risks of low radiation doses, we focus on survivors with doses less than 0.5 Sv. ... Analysis is of solid cancer incidence from 1958-1994, involving 7,000 cancer cases among 50,000 survivors in that dose and distance range. The results provide useful risk estimates for doses as low as 0.05-0.1 Sv, which are not overestimated by linear risk estimates computed from the wider dose ranges 0-2 Sv or 0-4 Sv. There is ... an upper confidence limit on any possible threshold is computed as 0.06 Sv [emphasis added]. It is indicated that modification of the neutron dose estimates currently under consideration would not markedly change the conclusions.' In the illustration above, at 3.4 rads (gamma dose equivalent) reduced the natural leukemia rate by 30% in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki data available in 1982. There seems to be a "threshold" of 8 rads before there is any increase in risk. (H. Kato and W. J. Schull, 'Studies of the mortality of A-bomb survivors. 7. Mortality, 1950-1978: Part I. Cancer mortality', Radiation Research, May 1982, v90, Issue 2, pp. 395-432.) The accuracy in dosimetry (substantiated by measurements of neutron induced activity and gamma ray thermoluminescence in the two cities) at that time meant that the doses were generally believed accurate to about +/- 50% (the accuracy of later estimates has increased). These data are based on a radiation quality factor of about 20 for neutrons, to reconcile data from the two cities (the Hiroshima gun-type bomb bomb leaked the most neutrons, which were mainly absorbed in the high explosive in the Nagasaki device which worked by spherically symmetrical implosion), i.e., 1 rad from neutrons was considered to be equivalent to 20 rads of gamma rays. The reason for the reduction in natural leukemia rate by 3.4 rads may be either the stimulation of the protein P53 repair mechanism which repairs DNA strands broken by radiation, and/or a long-term boosting to the immune system caused somehow by surviving the nuclear explosions with low doses. It is unlikely to be a completely statistical random error, because the sample size of people exposed to low doses of radiation is very large - 23,073 people exposed to an average of 3.4 rads, with an unexposed control group size of 31,581. However, the exact doses received were still fairly uncertain in 1982, and the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still dying:
This means that the early data from the 1950s upon which all the health physics philosophy (linear dose-effects relation with no threshold dose before effects start to appear, and no effect of dose rate - see previous post) is useless not only because of the dosimetry but because it was premature to judge long terms effects by that early data. For example, the major source of 1950s data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki is summarised in a table on page 966 of the 1957 U.S. Congressional Hearings before the Special Subcommittee on Radiation of the Join Committee on Atomic Energy, The Nature of Radioactive Fallout and Its Effects on Man. This table was headed "Incidence of leukemia among the combined exposed populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by distance from the hypocenter (January 1948-September 1955)", and it is divided into distances of 0-1 km (0.96% of survivors had leukemia), 1-1.5 km (0.30% of survivors had leukemia), 1.5-2 km (0.043% of survivors had leukemia) and beyond 2 km (0.017% had leukemia). This early data was simply not detailed enough, and not collected over a long enough period of time to assess the effects of radiation properly, and there was no proper dosimetry to determine the doses people received, their shielding by houses (and the mutual shielding of clusters of houses), etc. The valuable data has taken decades to get.
The joint Japanese-American (Department of Energy)-funded Radiation Effects Research Foundation aren't putting the sort of detailed dose-effects data we need on the internet due to political bias in favour of fashionable prejudice in Japan, despite such bias being cynically anti-scientific, ignorance-promoting, politically expedient dogmatism: its online 16 pages booklet called 'Basic Guide to Radiation and Health Sciences' gives no quantitative results on radiation effects whatsoever, while it falsely promotes lies about radioactive rainout on page 5:
Above: by the time that the mass fires developed in the wooden homes of Hiroshima (breakfast time) and Nagasaki (lunch time) from blast wind-overturned cooking braziers, paper screens, and bamboo furnishings, the mushroom cloud has been blown away by the wind. The moisture and soot from the firestorm in Hiroshima which condensed to a 'black rain' when it had risen and cooled above the city, fell on the city an hour or two after the explosion and did not intersect the radioactive mushroom cloud, which had attained much higher altitude than the firestorm soot and moisture in any case. The neutron induced activity doses from the ground were trivial compared to the outdoor initial nuclear radiation doses, as illustrated in a previous post using the latest DS02 dosimetry. The RERF propaganda seeks to discredit civil defence by false propaganda, a continuation of the fellow travelled Cold War Soviet communist propaganda against Western defenses.
‘Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion.’
- R. P. Feynman (quoted by Smolin, The Trouble with Physics, 2006, p. 307).
‘Science is the belief in the ignorance of [the speculative consensus of] experts.’
- R. P. Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, 1999, p187.
The linear non-threshold (LNT) anti-civil defence dogma results from ignoring the vitally important effects of the dose rate on cancer induction, which have been known and published in papers by Mole and a book by Loutit for about 50 years; the current dogma which is falsely based on merely the total dose, thus ignoring the time-dependent ability of protein P53 and other to cancer-prevention mechanisms to repair broken DNA segments. This is particularly the case for double strand breaks, where the whole double helix gets broken; the repair of single strand breaks is less time-dependent because there is no risk of the broken single strand being joined to the wrong end of a broken DNA segment. Repair is only successful in preventing cancer if the broken ends are rapaired correctly before too many unrepaired breaks have accumulated in a short time; if too many double strand breaks occur quickly, segments can be incorrectly 'repaired' with double strand breaks being miss-matched to the wrong segments ends, possibly inducing cancer if the resulting somatic cell can then undergo division successfully without apoptosis.
http://www.rerf.jp/top/qae.htm.If you look at the data they provide at http://www.rerf.or.jp/eigo/faqs/faqse.htm, it only extends to 1990 and deliberately doesn't include any dosimetry at all (although the doses depend on shielding, they could have dealt with this by providing average shielding figures at each range, or simply ignoring distance and plotting dose versus effects). But I found the 1988 report update based on the 1986 dosimetry, which is close to the latest data: Y. Shimizu, et al., Life Span Study Report II, Part 2, Cancer Mortality in the Years 1950-1985 Based on the Recently Revised Doses (DS86), Radiation Effects Research Foundation, RERF-TR-5-88:
You can see that small doses up to 5 rads have no effect either way on the leukemia risk, while 6-9 rads in this data seems to cause a reduction in normal leukemia risk from 0.17% to 0.12%. Doses which exceed this are harmful, possibly because the P53 repair mechanism was saturated and could not repair radiation induced damage to DNA due to the rate it occurred at higher doses. A dose of 20-40 rads more than doubles the natural leukemia risk. Hence anyone getting leukemia after a larger dose is more than 50% likely to have got the cancer as a result of the radiation exposure than naturally. (You cannot say this about other forms of cancer because 23% of Americans die from some form of cancer now anyway, so even the sort of risks at massive radiation doses can't compete with the natural risk of cancer for most types of cancer.) Notice that the DS02 dosimetry dose effects estimates are within 10% of the earlier DS86 estimates. DS02 (Dosimetry System 2002) was adopted in 2003 and gives a radiation dose at 1 m above he ground in open terrain at 1 km from ground zero of 4.5 and 8.7 Gy in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, with 0.08 and 0.14 Gy at 2 km, respectively. According to the recent Life Span Study report for the period of 1950-2000, among 86,611 survivors for whom individual doses were estimated, there were 47,685 deaths (55% of total number of survivors alive in 1950), including 10,127 from solid cancer and 296 from leukemia. Out of the 10,127 solid cancer deaths, only 5% were due to radiation, as shown by comparison to a non-exposed (but otherwise matched) control group.
In 1969, Professor Ernest Sternglass, a physicist, correlated a dramatic increase in infant mortality during the 1950s to the increasing fallout radiation from nuclear testing. His papers and books on low-level radiation effects were unscientific in the sense that they illustrate how not to do science. He had no control group, unlike the Hiroshima and Nagasaki data. So he had no idea what was causing the childhood mortality rise. It could have been diet, proximity to smoking adults at home, effects of natal X-rays (see previous post), childhood X-ray checks or screening for TB, etc.
Above: Professor Sternglass' analysis, which wasn't even based upon a real increase childhood mortality, which was falling before, during and after the nuclear tests. Sternglass instead claimed that in the absence of nuclear testing, childhood mortality should (in his opinion), have somehow continued to decrease according to the average fall rate of 1935-50 (when better medical care was reducing childhood mortality). Then he claimed that the flattening of the curve which occurred instead was evidence for a relative increase in childhood mortality due to radiation from fallout caused by nuclear testing.
He was therefore first assuming that fallout from bomb testing was responsible, and then - without stating this assumption - he was using this assumption to claim that the data of the correlation between infant mortality and fallout rate was evidence that fallout was causing the increase! His first presentation was at the 9th Annual Hanford Biological Symposium, May 1969. On 24 July 1969, Dr Alice Stewart wrote an article for the New Scientist, "The pitfalls of Extrapolation" which found another contradiction in Professor Sternglass' theory:
"Sternglass has postulated a fetal mortality trend which would eventually produce rates well below the level which - according to his own theory - would result from background radiation."
The danger here is that bad science, lacking mechanism, can be asserted and become credible in the public despite being completely false, just because a scientist misuses authority to gain attention. In this case, when Sternglass' paper was rejected from a scientific journal, he had it published in the September 1969 issue of Esquire magazine, titled ‘The death of all children’. That magazine advertised the story as a selling point, and sent out copies of the magazine to prominent people in politics. If he had scientific evidence that was being covered up, that would have been reason to do that, assuming that the media would be interested in making a political storm out of the facts (which strongly support a result which is the opposite of that which Sternglass makes). So you end up with the idea that these false claims about low level radiation stem from politics: if the public wants to fear low level, low dose rate radiation, someone will fiddle the statistics accordingly. Anyone giving the facts is conveniently ignored or ridiculed as being ‘out of touch’ or part of a conspiracy and cover-up.
Sternglass' straight line extrapolation is completely pseudoscience, because if carried into the past it predicts a time with 100% infant mortality (evidently wrong, because people are alive now), and extrapolated into the future it predicts 0% childhood mortality (clearly false, because disease cannot be eradicated, despite the innovations like sulfonamides and antibiotics in the 1935-50 era). This type of error due to a lack of causality and proper mechanism based predictions is not limited to the controversy over the effects of radiation. It is also typical of how controversy is created by people like Dr Edward Witten, string theorist, and is completely false science: Witten claims that string theory has the wonderful property of "predicting gravity". Actually, it predicts nothing checkable about it, and so doesn't, it is rather the case that 11-dimensional supergravity is assumed to be true, because it is assumed that gravity is due to spin-2 gauge bosons (gravitons) which nobody has ever observed. What Witten should have said is that it is an ad hoc model which includes spin-2 gravitons that nobody has ever seen, which is a far cry from claiming that string theory predicts gravity. These people are in some way well meaning I'm sure, but they are being deliberately misleading over scientific facts to boost some research program or political viewpoint just for the sake of politics or controversy, not science. As stated in an earlier post, quite a bit of iodine-131 was released across America by Nevada testing in 1951-62, but even the effects of that were far smaller than what Sternglass was claiming.
Darrell Huff wrote a book called How to Lie with Statistics which has the example that researchers found that the number of children in a family in Holland correlated to the number of storks nests on the roof of the home! Perhaps that proves that storks really deliver children to families? Well, actually the bigger the family, the bigger the home they needed on the average. The bigger families with more children tended to have bigger, older houses, with big old roofs which had more storks nests because of their size and age. Professor Sternglass has recently had a change from claiming that low-level radiation is lethal: he has published a book about what happened before the big bang, an analogy to an egg dividing many times to produce all the particles.
(I don't find that too scientific either because it just ignores the pair-production mechanism for the creation of fundamental particles in strong fields, it is essentially ad hoc theorizing which doesn't explain or predict the key issues in the cosmological application of general relativity - such as the epicycles like dark matter and dark energy - it doesn't explain the Standard Model of Particle Physics, and as a result, perhaps, it has not gained so much attention as his claims on low-level radiation. However, Sternglass is right in some details, such as the cause of the double slit experiment interference with single photons being the size of the photon compared to the slit spacing, about Bohr's mainstream Copenhagen Interpretation orthodoxy being not even wrong unpredictive belief, and about Dirac's sea in quantum field theory being censored today as a physical mechanism because of heresies over aether, which he discussed with Einstein and others like Feynman, who advised him to check and prove his ideas more carefully.)
Update: the report by Donald A. Pierce and Dale L. Preston of RERF, 'Radiation-Related Cancer Risks at Low Doses among Atomic Bomb Survivors' in Radiation Research v. 154 (2000), pp. 178–186 states: 'Analysis is of solid cancer [not leukemia] incidence from 1958–1994, involving 7,000 cancer cases among 50,000 survivors in that dose and distance range. ... There is a statistically significant risk in the range 0–0.1 Sv, and an upper confidence limit on any possible threshold is computed as 0.06 Sv. It is indicated that modification of the neutron dose estimates currently under consideration would not markedly change the conclusions.'
D. L. Preston et al., 'Effect of Recent Atomic Bomb Survivor Dosimetry Changes on Cancer Mortality Risk Estimates,' Radiation Research, v162 (2004), pp. 377-389 state: 'The Radiation Effects Research Foundation has recently implemented a new dosimetry system, DS02, to replace the previous system, DS86. This paper assesses the effect of the change on risk estimates for radiation-related solid cancer and leukemia mortality. The changes in dose estimates were smaller than many had anticipated, with the primary systematic change being an increase of about 10% in γ-ray estimates for both cities. In particular, an anticipated large increase of the neutron component in Hiroshima for low-dose survivors did not materialize. However, DS02 improves on DS86 in many details, including the specifics of the radiation released by the bombs and the effects of shielding by structures and terrain. ... For both solid cancer and leukemia, estimated age–time patterns and sex difference are virtually unchanged by the dosimetry revision. The estimates of solid-cancer radiation risk per sievert and the curvilinear dose response for leukemia are both decreased by about 8% by the dosimetry revision, due to the increase in the γ-ray dose estimates...' However, the difficulty of finding any recent reported summary of the key data on the internet suggests that maybe they are not publishing the detailed data on dose versus effects, but just some average based on force-fitting the high-dose effects data to the linear, no-threshold model. Otherwise it would just be embarrassing to the orthodoxy, and draw the ignorant scorn of the anti-nuclear lobby? Of course the public at large only wants to hear lies about radiation because they've been brainwashed by propaganda based on prejudices, not science, and the media provide what readers want to hear, political arguments.
The information from the current online version of http://www.rerf.or.jp/eigo/faqs/faqse.htm#faq2, quoting data for 1950-90 from Radiation Research (146:1-27, 1996), without any doses to correspond to the effects despite the massive 2002 dosimetry project, clearly seems to prove that the Radiation Effects Research Foundation is covering up the dose-effects data by only making available on the internet data stripped of the dosimetry, so that it doesn't upset the 1950s linear, no-threshold religious style orthodoxy or rather, dogma. Of course, if they didn't cover-up, the implications would be uproar. So the one really valuable source of information is censored.
There is no other really reliable data because of the lack of good control groups (with similar exposures to other risks, similar lifestyles, etc.) and statistically significant population sizes exposed. For example, the 64 Marshallese on Rongelap after the Bravo test who were exposed to about 175 rads of gamma radiation from fallout over 44 hours in 1954 are too small a sample to get accurate long-term data from. In 1972, one person died from leukemia due to gamma radiation in the group of 64, and several thyroid nodules (most thyroid effects of radiation are not lethal) also occurred as a result of beta radiation to the thyroid gland from drinking water collected by an open cistern which became contaminated by the fallout containing iodine-131. Although this gives a leukemia risk of 1/64 after 175 rads received over 44 hours, this figure is statistically very weak because of the small sample size.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki data are being deliberately abused for propaganda purposes by ignoring the low dose data, and falsely taking high dose data and using that as if effects are directly proportional to dose with no threshold and no dose rate effect. Sometimes in the past claims have been made that the cancer rates were worse than previously thought. In 1957, Japanese type isolated wooden houses were exposed to nuclear tests in Nevada during Operation Plumbbob to determine how much radiation shielding they provided. It's obvious that a cluster of houses will provided more shielding than an isolated house in a desert, because the slant direct and scattered radiation will get additional shielding by the surrounding buildings they have to penetrate. It turned out that the wooden houses gave a typical protection factor of about 2-3 against the initial neutrons and gamma rays. The shielding by adjacent buildings was ignored. Later it was shown that the shielding by surrounding houses in a city doubles the overall protection factor for wooden houses, from 2-3 to 4-6. As a result, the estimated doses were halved. This meant that the same number of cancers was caused by only half as much radiation, so the number of cancers per unit of radiation was doubled.
So these revisions were caused by dosimetry, not new effects showing up! The dosimetry is very accurate now. The effects of radiation are "well known" in the scientific sense, although they're not "well known" in the political sense.
Kenneth L. Mossman of Arizona State University wrote a review of the problem in the March 1998 issue of Medical Physics (v25, Issue No. 3, pp. 279-284), on 'The linear no-threshold debate: Where do we go from here?', arguing:
'For the past several years, the LNT (linear no-threshold) theory has come under attack within the scientific community. Analysis of a number of epidemiological studies of the Japanese survivors of the atomic bombings and workers exposed to low level radiation suggest that the LNT philosophy is overly conservative, and low-level radiation may be less dangerous than commonly believed. Proponents of current standards argue that risk conservatism is justified because low level risks remain uncertain and it is prudent public health policy; LNT opponents maintain that regulatory compliance costs are excessive, and there is now substantial scientific information arguing against the LNT model. Regulators use the LNT theory in the standards setting process to predict numbers of cancers due to exposure to low level radiation because direct observations of radiation-induced cancers in populations exposed to low level radiation are difficult. The LNT model is simplistic and provides a conservative estimate of risk. Abandoning the LNT philosophy and relaxing regulations would have enormous economic implications. However, alternative models to predict risk at low dose are as difficult to justify as the LNT model. Perhaps exposure limits should be based on model-independent approaches. There is no requirement that exposure limits be based on any predictive model. It is prudent to base exposure limits on what is known directly about health effects of radiation exposure of human populations.'
A more recent review, in 2005, of the mechanism behind the Hiroshima and Nagasaki data at low doses was done by L. E. Feinendegen in his paper, 'Evidence for beneficial low level radiation effects and radiation hormesis' in the British Journal of Radiology, v78 (2005), pp. 3-7:
'Low doses in the mGy range [1 mGy = 0.1 rad, since 1 Gray = 1 Joule/kg = 100 rads] cause a dual effect on cellular DNA. One is a relatively low probability of DNA damage per energy deposition event and increases in proportion to the dose. At background exposures this damage to DNA is orders of magnitude lower than that from endogenous sources, such as reactive oxygen species. The other effect at comparable doses is adaptive protection against DNA damage from many, mainly endogenous, sources, depending on cell type, species and metabolism. Adaptive protection causes DNA damage prevention and repair and immune stimulation. It develops with a delay of hours, may last for days to months, decreases steadily at doses above about 100 mGy to 200 mGy and is not observed any more after acute exposures of more than about 500 mGy. Radiation-induced apoptosis and terminal cell differentiation also occur at higher doses and add to protection by reducing genomic instability and the number of mutated cells in tissues. At low doses reduction of damage from endogenous sources by adaptive protection maybe equal to or outweigh radiogenic damage induction. Thus, the linear-no-threshold (LNT) hypothesis for cancer risk is scientifically unfounded and appears to be invalid in favour of a threshold or hormesis. This is consistent with data both from animal studies and human epidemiological observations on low-dose induced cancer. The LNT hypothesis should be abandoned and be replaced by a hypothesis that is scientifically justified and causes less unreasonable fear and unnecessary expenditure.'
See also the previous post on this blog for the cause of the LNT error due to early, inaccurate 1950s data, and ignoring dose rate consequences.
Online there is a 1982 book by Harvey Wasserman, Norman Solomon, Robert Alvarez and Eleanor Walters called 'Killing our Own: Chronicling the Disaster of America's Experience with Atomic Radiation, 1945-1982'. It contains a summary of all the radiation horror stories (some like Sternglass, et al., are pseudoscience, and some are valid). It doesn't contain any of the basic data with large control groups that shows how many excess cancers actually occur as a function of dose for particular dose rates. It relies instead on the opinions of committees and scientific authorities, repeating Sternglass' claims in chapter 11 and complaining that 'The industry as a whole has devoted thousands of dollars to undercutting his reputation.' That's the problem: you can't deal with errors by making ad hominem attacks on the reputations of the people making the errors, but by clearly emphasising where the errors are. Better still, publish the facts briefly, clearly, honestly, and fairly as simple graphs in the first place, and then the public will know what they are and will be able to make informed judgements.
In May 1985, a U.S. National Research Council report on mortality in nuclear weapons test participants raised several questions. Some 5,113 nuclear test participants had died between 1952-81, when 6,125 deaths would be expected for a similar sized group of non-exposed Americans. The number of leukemia deaths was 56, identical to that in a similar sized non-exposed group. However, as the graph at the top of this post shows, the risk depends on the dose, so the few people with the highest doses would have far greater risks. In 1983, a C.D.C. report on the effects of fallout from the Plumbbob-Smoky test in 1957 showed that 8 participants in that test has died from leukemia up to 1979, compared to only 3 expected from a similar sized sample of non-exposed Americans. However, even for the Plumbbob-Smoky test, the overall death rate from all causes in the exposed test participants (320 deaths from 1957-79) was less than that in a matched sample of non-exposed Americans (365 deaths). The average dose to American nuclear test participants was only about 0.5 rad, although far higher doses were received by those working with fallout soon after nuclear tests. Altogether, out of 205,000 U.S. Department of Defense participants in nuclear tests, 34,000 were expected to die from naturally occurring cancer, and 11 from cancer due to radiation exposure. (According to the March 1990 U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency study guide DNA1.941108.010, report HRE-856, Medical Effects of Nuclear Weapons.
Update (13 August 2007):
There is an essay by Dr Donald W. Miller, Afraid of Radiation? Low Doses are Good for You, available in PDF format here. Two problems with that title are:
(1) as pointed out in previous posts, only long-ranged, low-LET radiation like gamma rays and x-rays (which are electrically neutral, and thus only weakly ionizing) exhibit a threshold in all reliable data. Alpha and beta radiations are short-ranged, high-LET radiation, so where they can gain entry to the body (by being inhaled or ingested in soluble form, for example, which is not too easy for insoluble radioactivity trapped in fallout particles composed of fused glass spheres from melted sand grains), they can irradiate a few nearby cells very intensely because of their short range. With alpha and beta radiation, there is no threshold dose and all exposure is potentially harmful; the effects do obey a linear dose-response relationship at low doses of alpha and beta exposure. Only for gamma and x-rays at low dose rates are there thresholds and benefits possible from boosting the immune system and DNA repair mechanisms like P53.
(2) the dose rate seriously affects the rate of cancer induction, which is an effect currently ignored completely by Health Physicists. This is because all laws and personal 'dosimeter' radiation monitoring systems for radiation safety record merely the integrated total doses, without regard to the dose rate at which the dose was received. (Some effects prediction schemes do make arbitrary 'factor of two' corrections, doubling the danger expected from doses received above some threshold for high dose rates, but these corrections grossly neglect the observed facts; see previous post for details of how this was discovered in animal experiments, and why it is still censored out!).
Summary: gamma or x-ray radiation received at a low dose rate in small total doses can reduce the normal cancer rate. If this small total dose radiation is received at a high dose rate, however, protein P53 may not be fast enough able to repair the damage successfully during the exposure, and if there are multiple breaks in DNA strands produced in a short period of time, the broken bits will risk being 'repaired' incorrectly (the wrong way around or whatever), initiating cancer at some time in the future when that DNA is unzipped and thus copied in order to create new cells.
This isn't rocket science. As an analogy, solar radiation from the sun contains ultraviolet radiation, which will make a geiger counter (provided it has been provided with a transparent glass window, not a shield to keep ultraviolet light out!) click rapidly, since it borders the soft x-ray spectrum and is weakly ionizing. If you receive ultraviolet radiation at a low dose rate in small total doses, the positive effects may outweigh the risks: vitamin D produced which is helpful rather than dangerous. If, however, you are exposed to very intense ultraviolet, the DNA in your skin gets broken up at a rate faster than protein P53 can stick the pieces together again, so some bits are put back together in the wrong order and skin cancer may eventually result when those cells try to divide to form new skin cells. The visible 'burning' of skin by ultraviolet is also due to dose rate effects causing cellular death and serious cellular disruption. It doesn't matter so much what the total dose is. What matters even more than the dose, for long term effects, is the dose rate (speed) at which the radiation dose is received.
The key facts about radiation seem to be: it's all harmful at sufficiently high dose rates and at high doses. Gamma and x-rays are 'safe' (i.e., have advantages which outweigh risks) at low dose rates (obviously dose rates were high at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where 95% of the doses were received from initial radiation lasting 10 seconds) and at low total doses. On the other hand, there is always a risk from cellular exposure to alpha and beta radiation because they are short-ranged so their energy is all absorbed in just a small number cells. Because they are quickly stopped by solid matter, they deposit all their energy in sensitive areas of bone tissue if you inhale or ingest sources of alpha and beta radiation that can be doposited in bones (a very small fraction of ingested soluble radium, strontium, uranium, and plutonium can end up in the bones). Gamma rays and x-rays are not dangerous at low dose rates and small total doses because they are not stopped so easily by matter as alpha and beta particles because they carry no electrical charge. This means that gamma and x-rays deposit their energy over a larger volume of tissue so that at low dose rates DNA repair mechanisms can repair damage as soon as it occurs.
Anyway, to get back to the paper by Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD, he does usefully explain an evolved conspiracy to confuse the facts:
'A process known as radiation hormesis mediates its beneficial effect on health. Investigators have found that small doses of radiation have a stimulating and protective effect on cellular function. It stimulates immune system defenses, prevents oxidative DNA damage, and suppresses cancer.'
He cites the monumental report on effects of low dose rate, low-LET gamma radiation on 10,000 people in Taiwan by W.L. Chen,Y.C. Luan, M.C. Shieh, S.T. Chen, H.T. , Kung, K.L. Soong, Y.C.Yeh, T.S. Chou, S.H. Mong, J.T.Wu, C.P. Sun,W.P. Deng, M.F.Wu, and M.L. Shen, Is Chronic Radiation an Effective Prophylaxis Against Cancer?, published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Vol. 9, No. 1, Spring 2004, page 6, available in PDF format here:
'An extraordinary incident occurred 20 years ago in Taiwan. Recycled steel, accidentally contaminated with cobalt-60 ([low dose rate, low-LET gamma radiation emitter] half-life: 5.3 y), was formed into construction steel for more than 180 buildings, which 10,000 persons occupied for 9 to 20 years. They unknowingly received radiation doses that averaged 0.4 Sv, a collective dose of 4,000 person-Sv. Based on the observed seven cancer deaths, the cancer mortality rate for this population was assessed to be 3.5 per 100,000 person-years. Three children were born with congenital heart malformations, indicating a prevalence rate of 1.5 cases per 1,000 children under age 19.
'The average spontaneous cancer death rate in the general population of Taiwan over these 20 years is 116 persons per 100,000 person-years. Based upon partial official statistics and hospital experience, the prevalence rate of congenital malformation is 23 cases per 1,000 children. Assuming the age and income distributions of these persons are the same as for the general population, it appears that significant beneficial health effects may be associated with this chronic radiation exposure. ...
'The data on reduced cancer mortality and congenital malformations are compatible with the phenomenon of radiation hormesis, an adaptive response of biological organisms to low levels of radiation stress or damage; a modest overcompensation to a disruption, resulting in improved fitness. Recent assessments of more than a century of data have led to the formulation of a well founded scientific model of this phenomenon.
'The experience of these 10,000 persons suggests that long term exposure to [gamma]radiation, at a dose rate of the order of 50 mSv (5 rem) per year, greatly reduces cancer mortality, which is a major cause of death in North America.'
The statistics in the paper by Chen and others has been alleged to apply to a younger age group than the general population, affecting the significance of the data, although in other ways the data are more valid than Hiroshima and Nagasaki data extrapolations to low doses. For instance, the radiation cancer scare mongering of survivors of high doses in Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have been prejudiced in the sense of preventing a blind to avoid “anti-placebo” effect, e.g. increased fear, psychological stress and worry about the long term effects of radiation, and associated behaviour. The 1958 book about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors, “Formula for Death”, makes the point that highly irradiated survivors often smoked more, in the belief that they were doomed to die from radiation induced cancer anyway. Therefore, the fear culture of the irradiated survivors would statistically be expected to result in a deviancy from normal behaviour, in some cases increasing the cancer risks above those due purely to radiation exposure.
For up-to-date data and literature discussions on the effects of DNA repair enzymes on preventing cancers from low-dose rate radiation, please see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis
The irrational, fashionable, groupthink semi-religious (believing in speculation) society we live in!
‘Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion.’ - R. P. Feynman (quoted by Smolin, TTWP, 2006, p. 307).
‘Science is the belief in the ignorance of [the speculative consensus of] experts.’ - R. P. Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, 1999, p187.
If we lived in a rational society, the facts above would be reported in the media, and would be the focus for discussion about radiation hazards. Instead, the media and their worshippers (the politicians) as well as their funders (the general public who fund the media by paying for it), choose to ignore or ridicule the facts because the facts are 'unfashionable' and lying bullshit (see Sterngrass graph above) is 'fashionable' and some sort of consensus of mainstream narcissistic elitists with a political mandate to kill people by lying about the effects of low-level radiation and refusing to discuss the facts. There is no uncertainty about these facts, as radiation effects have been better checked and more extensively studied than any other alleged hazard to life!
Below a little summary of politically-inexpedient facts from a book edited by Nobel Laureate Professor Eugene P. Wigner, Survival and the Bomb: Methods of Civil Defense, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, London, 1969.
The dust jacket blurb states: 'The purpose of civil defence, Mr. Wigner believes, is the same as that of the anti-ballistic missile: to provide not a retaliation to an attack, but a defense against it; for no peace is possible as long as defense consists solely in the threat of revenge and as long as an aggressor - the one who strikes first - has a considerable advantage. Civil and anti-ballistic missile defense not only provide some protection against an attack, they render it less likely by decreasing the advantage gained by striking first.'
The chapter on 'Psychological Problems of A-Bomb Defense' is by Professor of psychology, Irving L. Janis, who states on p. 61:
'It has been suggested that the device of using increasing doses of graphic sound films (preferably in technicolor) showing actual disasters should be investigated as a possible way of hardening people and preventing demoralization.'
He adds on pp. 62-3:
'For the large number of patients who will be worried about epilation, ugly scar tissue, and other disfigurements, a special series of pamphlets and posters might be prepared in advance, containing reassuring information about treatment and the chances of recovery.'
On pp. 64-5 he deals with the 'General Effects on Morale of A-Bomb Attack':
'In general, a single atomic bomb disaster is not likely to produce any different kind of effects on morale than those produced by other types of heavy air attacks. This is the conclusion reached by USSBS [U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, 1945] investigators in Japan. Only about one-fourth of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki asserted that they had felt that victory was impossible because of the atomic bombing. The amount of defeatism was not greater than that in other Japanese cities. In fact, when the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were compared with those in all other cities in Japan, the morale of the former was found to resemble that of people in the lightly bombed and unbombed cities rather than in the heavily bombed cities. This has been explained as being due to the fact that morale was initially higher than average in the two cities because, prior to the A-Bomb disasters, the populace had not been exposed to a series of heavy air attacks. Apparently a single A-Bomb attack produced no greater drop in morale among the Japanese civilians than would be expected from a single saturation raid of incendiaries or of high explosive bombs.'
On p. 68, Professor Janis addresses the question 'Will There Be Widespread Panic?':
'Prior to World War II, government circles in Britain believed that if their cities were subjected to heavy air raids, a high percentage of the bombed civilian population would break down mentally and become chronically neurotic. This belief, based on predictions made by various specialists, proved to be a myth.'
The chapter on 'Decontamination' is by Dr Frederick P. Cowan (then the Head of the Health Physics Division, Brookhaven National Laboratory) and Charles B. Meinhold, who summarise data from a vital selection of decontamination research reports. The first report summarised (on page 227) is J. C. Maloney, et al., Cold Weather Decontamination Study, McCoy, I, II, and IV, U.S. Army Chemical Corps., Nuclear Defense Laboratory, Edgewood Arsenal, reports NDL-TR-24, -32, and -58 (1962, 1962 and 1964), which demonstrated that:
1. 'In most cases, the time during which access to important facilities must be denied can be reduced by a factor of 10 (e.g., from two months to less than a week) using practical methods of decontamination.'
2. 'Radiation levels inside selected structures can be reduced by a factor of 5.'
3. 'Radiation levels outdoors in selected areas can be reduced by a factor of 20.'
4. 'These results can be achieved without excessive exposure to individuals carrying out the decontamination.'
On page 228, Cowan and Meinhold point out:
'Although long sheltering periods may in some cases be reduced by the effect of rainfall or by transfer of people to less-contaminated areas, it is clear that decontamination is a very important technique for hastening the process of recovery.
'Although the gamma radiation from fallout is the major concern, the effects of beta radiation should not be overlooked. Fallout material left on the skin for an extended period of time [this critical time is just a few minutes for fallout contamination an hour after the explosion, but much longer periods of exposure are required for burns if the fallout is more than an hour old, and after 3 days the specific activity of fallout from a land surface burst is simply too low to cause beta burns] can cause serious burns, and if inhaled or ingested in sufficient quantities, it can result in internal damage. Grossly contaminated clothing may contribute to such skin exposures or indirectly to the ingestion of radioactive material. Thus it may be necessary to resort to decontamination of body surfaces, clothing, food and water.'
On pp. 229-230, the basic facts about land surface burst fallout stated are:
1. 'The mass of the radioactive material itself is a tiny fraction of the mass of the inert fallout material with which it is associated. This, in discussing the mechanics of removal, fallout may be considered as a type of dirt.'
2. 'In general, the amount of radioactive material removed is proportional to the total amount of fallout material removed.'
3. 'Although the solubility of fallout particles depends on the composition of the ground where the detonation took place, it is fair to say that detonations over land will produce essentially insoluble particles while detonations over water will produce much less but fairly soluble fallout material. This soluble material will have a much greater tendency to adsorb to surfaces.'
4. 'Under most circumstances one is dealing with small particle sizes.
'The methods applicable to radiological decontamination are those available to dirt removal in general. Some common examples are sweeping, brushing, vacuuming, flushing with water, scrubbing, surface removal, and filtration. In addition, the radioactive material can be shielded by plowing, spading, covering with clean dirt or by construction of protective dikes. Such methods may utilize power equipment or depend upon manual labor. Their effectiveness will vary widely, depending upon the method of application, the type of surface, the conditions of deposition, etc. ...
'Flushing with water can be very effective, particularly if the water is under pressure, the surface is smooth and proper drainage [to deep drains, where the radiation is shielded by intervening soil] is available. Under certain conditions, the use of water flushing during the deposition period can be of great value. The water will tend to fill the surface irregularities and prevent entrapment of particles. Soluble materials will be kept in solution, thereby reducing the chance of surface adsorption.'
On p. 232, a useful summary table of decontamination is given:
There is other extensive data on fallout decontamination in many previous posts on this blog, e.g., as the posts here, here and here (this last link includes a slightly different table of decontamination efficiencies, which is interesting to compare to the table of data above), as well as several other earlier ones. In summing up the situation for urban area decontamination, Cowan and Meinhold state on p. 232:
'A number of factors make large-scale decontamination useful in urban areas. Much of the area between buildings is paved and, thus, readily cleaned using motorized flushers and sweepers, which are usually available. If, in addition, the roofs are decontaminated by high-pressure hosing, it may be possible to make entire buildings habitable fairly soon, even if the fallout has been very heavy.'
On page 237 they summarise the evidence concerning methods for the 'Decontamination of People, Clothing, Food, Water and Equipment':
'Since fallout is basically dirt contaminated with radioactive substances, it can be largely removed from the skin by washing with soap and water. ... Not all the radioactivity will be removed by washing, but that remaining will not be large enough to be harmful. ... To be a problem in relation to food, fallout must get into the food actually eaten by people. ... Vegetables exposed to fallout in the garden will be grossly contaminated but may still be usable after washing if protected by an outer skin or husk or if penetration of fallout into the edible portions is not excessive. ... Reservoirs will receive fallout, but much of it will settle to the bottom, be diluted by the huge volume of water, or be removed by the filtering and purifying systems. Cistern water may be very contaminated if contaminated rainwater or water from contaminated roofs has been collected. Milk from cattle who have fed on contaminated vegetation may contain large quantities of radioactive iodine for a period of a month or more ... but milk can be used for durable products such as powdered milk or cheese, since the radioactive iodine decays with a half-life of eight days. Thus, after a month only 7 percent of the initial [Iodine-131] remains.'
There is then a chapter on 'Economic Recovery' by Professor of Economics, Jack Hirshleifer, who points out on page 244:
'Economic recovery from localized bombing attacks in general has been quite remarkable. In Hiroshima, for example, power was generally restored to surviving areas on the day after the attack, and through railroad service recommenced on the following day. [Ref.: U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, The Effects of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Washington, D.C., 1946, p. 8.]
'By mid-1949, population was back to the preattack level, and 70 percent of the destroyed buildings had been reconstructed. [Ref.: Research Department, Hiroshima Municipal Office, as cited in Hiroshima, Hiroshima Publishing, 1949.]
'In general, populations of damaged areas have been highly motivated to stay on, even in the presence of severe deprivation; once having fled, they have been anxious to return. The thesis has even been put forward that a community hit by disaster rebounds so as to attain higher levels of achievement than would otherwise have been possible. [Ref.: this refers to the study after the 1917 Halifax explosion, made by Samuel H. Prince, Catastrophe and Social Change, Columbia University-Longmans, Green, New York, 1920.] ...
'In the midnineteenth century John Stuart Mill commented on:
... what has so often excited wonder, the great rapidity with which countries recover from a state of devastation; the disappearance, in a short
time, of all traces of the mischiefs caused by earthquakes, floods, hurricanes,
and the ravages of war. An enemy lays waste a country by fire and sword, and
destroys or carries away nearly all the moveable wealth existing in it: all the
inhabitants are ruined, and yet in a few years after, everything is much as it
was before. - J.S. Mill, 'Principles of Political Economy', Ashley's New Edition, Longmans, Green, London, 1929, Book I, pp. 74-75.
"From the earlier studies of radiation-induced mutations, made with fruitflies [by Nobel Laureate Hermann J. Muller and other geneticists who worked on plants, who falsely hyped their insect and plant data as valid for mammals like humans during the June 1957 U.S. Congressional Hearings on fallout effects], it appeared that the number (or frequency) of mutations in a given population ... is proportional to the total dose ... More recent experiments with mice, however, have shown that these conclusions need to be revised, at least for mammals. [Mammals are biologically closer to humans, in respect to DNA repair mechanisms, than short-lived insects whose life cycles are too small to have forced the evolutionary development of advanced DNA repair mechanisms, unlike mammals that need to survive for decades before reproducing.] When exposed to X-rays or gamma rays, the mutation frequency in these animals has been found to be dependent on the exposure (or dose) rate ...
"At an exposure rate of 0.009 roentgen per minute [0.54 R/hour], the total mutation frequency in female mice is indistinguishable from the spontaneous frequency. [Emphasis added.] There thus seems to be an exposure-rate threshold below which radiation-induced mutations are absent ... with adult female mice ... a delay of at least seven weeks between exposure to a substantial dose of radiation, either neutrons or gamma rays, and conception causes the mutation frequency in the offspring to drop almost to zero. ... recovery in the female members of the population would bring about a substantial reduction in the 'load' of mutations in subsequent generations."
Above: the theory of the experimentally observed threshold doses for the radium dial painters and for the Hiroshima survivors.
Updates: http://glasstone.blogspot.com/2009/10/secrecy-propaganda-factual-evidence.html
