Low Levels Are Healthy? Examining The Myths and Searching For Truth
Chernobyl
Exploring The "Healthy Worker Effect"
The significantly-exposed populations we can study are:
Japanese survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki;
Occupationally-exposed populations (including radiologists and other medical
practitioners);
Medically-exposed patient populations;
Radium body-burden populations;
Weapons and facilities releases populations (with military weapons tests
observers); and
High natural background radiation-exposed populations.
No Adverse Effects Found from Low
Doses
Data on health effects from low-to-moderate radiation doses show no adverse
health effects at doses below about 20 cGy. (The exception is for moderate
doses, above about 5 cGy, of high-dose-rate X-rays to the fetus at cell
differentiation during the second trimester of development.) In addition, data
show that adverse health effects are small for doses to the range of 200 to 400
cGy at low dose rates and for fractionated high dose rate exposures.
Statistically significant data show below-normal adverse health effects (i.e.,
health benefits) at low-to-moderate doses compared to unexposed populations.
These data are effectively obscured when linear relationships are arbitrarily
imposed on this non-linear data, thus misrepresenting low-to-moderate dose
effects. When relationships are not artificially forced to conform to the
"linear model," scientific fitting of the data show that polynomial
relationships generally are the "best-fit" to the actual low-to-moderate dose
data.
Japanese atomic bomb survivors
This population, followed by the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF),
consists of approximately 75,000 persons who received more than 1 cGy, with mean
radiation doses of 16-18 cGy, plus 35,000 "control" persons exposed to less than
1 cGy. These data are used as the primary support for the "linear model," but in
fact it extrapolates high dose effects to low doses, ignoring the actual data in
the low-to-moderate dose region.
As seen from this data, as a general conclusion, radiation health effects
presented as a function of dose without the applicable dose range can be
reasonably assumed to misrepresent the actual low-to-moderate dose-response
data.
There is lower cancer mortality in exposed survivors at less than 20 cGy.
There is lower non-cancer mortality in exposed survivors at less than 200 cGy.
There are no adverse effects to fetuses below doses of 10 cGy, and no
significant effects below 50 cGy.
Professor Emeritus Dr. Sohei Kondo observes that the use of the "linear model"
produced the unjustified public fear that caused an estimated 100,000 to 200,000
women to seek abortions in western Europe after Chernobyl.
These are the significant deaths and human tragedy of Chernobyl. The "linear
model" and unjustified creation of public fear is the cause.
There are no genetic effects in children of Japanese survivors.
Exposed survivors are outliving the non-exposed control population.
Occupationally exposed workers
Several radiation worker populations, with a wide range of doses, have been
studied: Radiologists (with up to to an estimated 500 cGy lifetime); other
medical workers (e.g., cardiologists who receive 5 to 15 cGy/yr); early nuclear
facility workers (e.g., moderate doses with relatively poor dosimetry, many with
confounding internal radiological and chemical exposures); and many later
nuclear workers (at lower doses with good dosimetry, with fewer confounding
internal exposures).
Marie Curie is often referred to as a "radiation victim" from her occupational
exposure. However she received many thousands of rem, dying of presumed aplastic
anemia at age 66 in 1934.
With respect to the occupational and facilities releases
populations, Dr. Richard Wilson presented data on the high exposures to former
Soviet Union nuclear workers (to doses to about 400 cGy/yr) and to the public
(to doses to about 50 cGy/yr).
No excess cancers were found in British radiologists, with estimated 100-500 cGy
lifetime doses.
This result contradicts the "linear model" which would show adverse dose effects
in this population if it were valid.
No excess cancers were found in US Army radiologic technicians, with estimated
50 cGy doses.
The "linear model" predicts an increase in cancers at these doses, which would
be readily detected in this population.
Mortality and cancer rates are lower in higher-exposed nuclear shipyard workers.
DOE has not published the report. The data are not in the literature, and the
contractor report was minimalized when it was eventually released under pressure
in 1991.
Professor Emeritus Dr. John Cameron compares the treatment the study received to
the treatment it would have received if it had shown 24% higher mortality or
increased cancer in the nuclear worker population.
No excess cancers nor non-cancer health effects were found in the high-dose DOE
worker population group.
Since this group has higher doses than the general radiation worker populations,
all above 5 cGy and 70% above 10 cGy, the "linear model" predicts significant
increases which would be evident.
Early nuclear workers have consistently lower cancer rates than the equivalent
general population.
A substantially unsupported, essentially invalid, "healthy worker effect", is
used to discount this and other significant data on occupationally exposed
workers.
However, the early nuclear worker exposure data is generally poor. Compared to
the NSWS data, dosimetry is questionable with many confounding effects,
especially from internal contamination and exposures, with relatively poor work
and dose histories. Study results are often poor, with effects that are not
dose-response related, which are often negative (showing greater effects at
lower doses), or in which dose effects are not considered.
The IARC report of government data does not support the "linear model", contrary
to its "conclusions" and its media campaign to foster public fear.
Professor Emeritus Dr. Myron Pollycove notes that the recent
report by the International Association for Research on Cancer (IARC) similarly
misrepresents dose-response data to report a "linear model" result. The IARC
report chooses to ignore data that shows lower than normal adverse effects,
i.e., risk decrements.
If all data were considered by IARC without arbitrarily excluding contrary data,
and applying a presumptive "linear model", the mortality data in these combined
populations would not "support" the "linear model."
As Professor Emeritus Dr. Don Luckey has found, the objective substantive data
in each of the cohorts indicate positive/beneficial effects for the exposed
populations, a result which can only result in a positive (beneficial) effect in
the combined populations.
The IARC, consistent with BEIR, NCRP and other government data presentation,
capriciously misrepresents the data to conform to the mandate for high public
costs for radiation protection policy for no public health benefit.
Medical patient exposures
Various medical procedures expose patients to low-to-moderate whole body doses,
often associated with high doses to specific organs, that exceed public or
radiation worker doses. These exposures include moderately high doses to
relatively young and otherwise healthy patients. Early procedures (until the
1970s) exposed many patients to relatively high doses compared to current
practices. US research to follow medical patient radiation exposure data has not
been supported, and some negative data has not been published (e.g., a study of
childhood I-131 procedures that found no adverse effects). However, some
significant medical follow-up data exist:
There is lower-than-normal thyroid cancer in patients with thyroid doses of 50
cGy from I-131 diagnosis, for those patients not diagnosed for possible thyroid
cancer.
There is no excess leukemia in patients with 10-15 cGy whole-body/bone dose from
I-131 hyperthyroid therapy.
These significant data again refute the "linear model" which erroneously
presumes, in the face of consistently contrary data for doses below 20 - 40 cGy,
that leukemia is caused by radiation linearly to zero dose.
There is no excess leukemia in patients with well-documented X-ray doses from
normal medical care up to about 300 cGy.
This study also contradicts a proposed association of medical X-ray exposures
with leukemia from a study which was limited to questionaires to leukemia
patients and controls on their X-ray histories that provided a poor and likely
biased estimate of X-ray doses.
There is lower than normal breast cancer from fluoroscopy doses to Canadian
women for tuberculosis below 30 cGy which shows: 34% lower than normal at 15 cGy,
highly statistically significant (2.7 standard deviations).
The report applies the "linear model" to predict 90 excess breast cancers in
100,000 women exposed to 15 cGy, and the actual data finds 1,000 fewer breast
cancer cases in the women exposed to 15 cGy.
BEIR uses this study to apply the "linear model" to the high-dose data,
completely misrepresenting the data, and erroneously using the study as a
primary source to support the "linear model" for radiation protection policy to
low doses.
This is not a simple oversight error in this report. This "error" is similarly
applied to other studies, usually less dramatically. Radiation protection policy
uses it to "prove the need for" low- dose radiation protection policies.
For example, the NCRP is aware of the validity of this result, yet Dr. Roy Shore
again used this report in the June 1995 ANS meeting to "support" the "linear
model," along with other reports in which a similar arbitrary straight-line is
used to "prove" the validity of the "linear model." Effects/Sv (in this case
excess breast cancer/Sv) are then calculated from the high dose data (to 3
significant figures), misrepresenting the actual data to falsely produce a
linear result.
This supports government radiation protection policies at high public cost, for
no public benefit (and possibly for the loss of public benefit since the
government policy acts to suppress the data and confirmatory research).
Internal radium-burden population
After Marie and Pierre Curie separated radium in 1902, its industrial use
(primarily in luminous paints) and medical stimulative effects led to high
internal radium body burdens. Bone necrosis (degeneration) and cancer (bone
sarcomas and head carcinomas) were known in the 1920s.
Eben Byers, a millionaire, socialite, sportsman, and industrialist (when that
was a "good thing") died notoriously in 1932 from using Radithor, a radium
elixir, ingesting massive quantities of radium. FDA used the case to obtain the
authority it had been seeking over radioactivity and radiation without
considering, then or later, the case as an "overdose", or reviewing and
reporting on the many thousands of people who had used radiation before the
1930s.
This government policy led, e.g., to government limits on radium in drinking
water at ingestion rates millions of times lower than Byers' ingestion; about
125,000 times lower than the thresholds for adverse effects in the radium dial
painters and other radium burden populations.
These are high regulatory costs
for no public health protection benefit.
There are no radiogenic cancers in the radium body burden population (about 86%
of the followed population) at doses below about 1,000 rad (cGy) bone dose after
more than 50 years followup.
Dr. Robert Thomas, a former Director of the CHR, also presents background on
program termination and the lack of resolution for disposition and availability
of the radium-burden population records.
Dr. Evans' presented the Invited Summary of the meeting at the 1981
International Conference. He confirmed that the large increase in the US data
since his report on about 600 cases from the MIT program, and with additional
international data, the conclusion that no radiogenic cancer had been seen below
1,000 rad (cGy), the CHR was incrementally constrained and defunded by DOE,
starting in 1983, at which it stopped the issuance of annual reports, to 1986
when it stopped taking new cases and stopped follow up of cases, to a 1992
termination, even though more than 1,000 cases are still alive, in a program
intended to be immortal for the life of the pre-1950 radium burden population.
A scientifically valid demonstration of a log-normal distribution of all tumors
vs dose in the dial painters projects a minimum threshold of about 400 cGy.
This data and analysis does not consider the additional significance of the much
larger population with doses below 1,000 cGy that exhibit no radiogenic cancers.
There is significantly lower mortality from all-causes in young US and UK female
dial painters.
Nuclear weapons and facility
releases
No adverse health effects are found in the 46 186 "atomic veterans" exposed to
above-ground nuclear tests. No excess cancer or all-cause mortality exist in UK
and Canadian weapons and facility-release personnel.
High natural background radiation
Cancer mortality in the 7 US Colorado Plateau states, at background doses about
3 times the US average (excluding radon lung doses), is about 15% lower than the
US average.
Nobel Laureate Dr. Rosalyn Yalow notes the substantial data in this study,
including addressing potential confounding effects. The results refute the
"linear model." The dose differences, with the size of the populations and the
death statistics, are sufficient for the "linear model" to show increases in
adverse health effects.
No adverse effects are found between stable, equivalent, Chinese populations in
a province with a factor of 3 difference in natural background doses.
The population size and the accuracy of the dosimetry, and detailed health data
over many years, establish that increases in adverse health effects would be
readily detected by the "linear model".
There are no discernible health effects in other high background radiation dose
populations. There is no increased lung cancer associated with indoor radon:
Lung cancer in non-smokers refutes predictions of linear projections from early
miner data.
The absense of lung cancer in non-smoking uranium miners who have less than
1,000 times the average 70-year indoor radon levels, vs. EPA predictions of
1,000 to 5,000 lung cancer deaths/100,000 persons so exposed, refutes the
potential for radon causing cancer at indoor radon levels.
The China HBA population has 2.7/100,000 lung cancer deaths compared to a higher
rate, 2.9/100,000, in the low dose CA population.
These results clearly contradict
the "linear model."
Uranium miners and smokers have different lung cancer types than do non-
smokers, refuting the possible association of non-smoker lung cancer with radon
based on miner data.
Significant confounding factors, including diesel fumes, spores, and other
contaminants, with high dust concentrations, in the small unventilated mines,
make any association of miners' lung cancer to radon very uncertain.
Later miners in better ventilated mines, at elevated radon levels, and other
workers exposed to radon levels up to about 70,000 pCi/L, do not have increased
lung cancer, contradicting the "linear model" and the validity of mathematical
projections to indoor radon levels.
Residents in radon spa areas have lower-than-normal cancers and other adverse
health effects.
Some areas have total cancers about 40%, and specific cancers about 50%, of
comparable populations in the region.
Lung cancer data by US county show a highly significant negative correlation
with indoor radon levels.
Data on radon in 272,000 homes covering more than 90% of the US population, by county, and by sex and correlated for smoking, show consistently lower lung cancer in counties with higher mean radon concentrations.
Non-human Radiation Effects Data
A century of scientific research on plant and animal biological populations has
consistently documented beneficial effects of low-to-moderate radiation
exposure.
Non-Human Biological Population Studies
Dr. Luckey notes that more than 1,000 studies in the scientific literature show
beneficial effects at low-to-moderate doses, with significant detrimental
effects at high doses, in plant and animal populations. These studies
scientifically refute the "linear model."
Cellular, Molecular Biology and Genetics Studies
Recent data, primarily from cancer and genetics research, demonstrate and
confirm the beneficial effects of low-to-moderate radiation doses on biological
organisms, including humans. Biological mechanisms explain the lack of advserse
health effects, and beneficial effects, of low-to-moderate radiation doses.
Victor Bond, MD demonstrates that radiation dose as energy/unit mass, i.e.,
"energy concentration", is not a valid relationship of radiation to health
effects and risk. He shows that total imparted energy to the subject biological
"level" (e.g., cell, organ, organism, population), to the total mass, is
scientifically related to effects, both mathematically and empirically.
Viewing the Data
Starting with Eben Byers' death in 1932, radiation protection policies and
research have increasingly fostered public fears and supported costly government
regulations and programs largely borne directly by the public by pass-through in
their medical and utility bills. These large costs were wasteful, but were
moderate compared to the primary costs of nuclear technology operations and
providing necessary protection for workers and the public from hazardous
radiation exposure. They were accomodated with minimal questioning due to the
ability of affected governments, utilities, and private corporations to readily
pass these costs through to the public, with negligible adverse competitive
costs.
Recently however, these radiation protection excesses have resulted in large
incremental public costs, with even more proposed, with no accompanying public
health benefit. Currently, these policies especially affect radioactive waste
management and site decommissioning costs, to the benefit of government
bureaucracies, with no identifiable health benefits. These costs are reducing
the viability and public benefits of many radiation and nuclear technology
applications. Not only is the world spending $-trillions with no public health
benefits, but humanity is also losing major advances and contributions to human
health and well-being.
Current work in Japan, and similar work in China, with the beginnings of small
efforts in Europe and elsewhere, may be the hope of the future. Again the world
is responding to US data and initiatives, especially as compiled and confirmed
by the singular work of Dr. Luckey and the research and reporting of many
others, including those who have participated in these sessions, while US policy
and public progress in the use and reasonable control of radiation and nuclear
technology applications stagnate in order to foster public fear and unjustified
public costs.
EPA and NRC rulemakings propose to still further reduce public radiation dose
limits and increase public costs, for no public health benefits. This is true
even when arbitrarily applying the "linear model" dose-response, since the
proposed regulations would reduce exposures that are "less than 1%" of public
radiation doses to limits that are "much less than 1%" of public doses; and to
"protect" individuals from doses that are small compared to natural variations
in daily living (e.g., much less difference than living above the second floor
of a building instead of on the first floor, working in a granite building, or
getting water from a well instead of a reservoir.)
ANS and other nuclear science, medicine, and technology-based organizations must
change past organization policies and participate in these rulemakings. There is
a need to require the Federal agencies to address the factual evidence on
radiation dose-response health effects that are necessary to establish valid
regulatory standards to assure public health and safety; and to constrain ever
increasing regulatory and program costs that provide no public health and safety
benefit, and that cost society the loss of the benefits of nuclear science and
technology applications to human health and welfare.
Current radiation protection limits are estimated to cost up to the range of
$23-billion per life-year saved as reported by a Harvard School of Public Health
study. Even these values are taken from regulatory analyses, which are based on
the "linear model," and which are likely to significantly understate the
cost/benefit.
Simply reflecting null health effects data by using a conservative no-threshold
sigmoidal dose-response model would result in increasing these reported costs by
factors of tens to thousands (e.g., considering the radium-burden population
data.) Of course, recognizing an actual threshold as shown by the radiation
dose-response data makes these costs infinite, before considering the data that
demonstrate beneficial effects for moderate doses in many populations.
Nuclear technologies bear these highly biased public health and environmental
protection costs compared to the much lower equivalent costs for much greater
health and environmental effects from alternative technologies. For example,
this adds $10s-millions in both capital and annual costs to nuclear power
operations, when the baseline already shows much lower adverse public health and
environmental effects than alternatives. The historical ability of utilities to
"just put it in the ratebase if the government requires it" is being negated
with new competition in power generation. Continuing to shut down nuclear plants
as "uneconomic" poses a high public risk of increased dependence on natural gas
and its inevitable future high prices and uncertain availability, and for coal
with much higher health and environmental effects. Even incorporating
"externalities" (i.e., accounting for residual "external" environmental costs
that are deemed not to be included in prices), coal power is not subject to
equivalent environmental and public health protection costs.
Taking Action
The ANS Biology and Medicine Division has established a working relationship
with the Health Physics Society. Following the November 1994 ANS sessions, a
petition to the ANS Board initiated reconsideration of the "linear model" by the
Scientific and Public Issues (SPI) Committee consisting of present, incoming,
and past HPS Presidents. At the recent July 1995 Annual Meeting, the SPI
Committee found that the "linear model" can not be supported by the scientific
evidence.
This momentous action responds to HPS recognition that the misuse of the "linear
model" portends spending in excess of $1-trillion in the United States alone for
negligible health benefits just for government environmental "cleanup" programs,
while truly significant public health protections are unfunded.
Also of great significance is the United Nations Scientific Committee (UNSCEAR)
1994 substantial report on data that document cellular repair and adaptive
responses. The former UNSCEAR chair, Zbigniew Jaworowski, has also written in
Nuckleonika, January 1995: "After 12 years of deliberation, the UNSCEAR decided
in March 1994 to publish its report on radiation hormesis, the beneficial
effects of radiation. The report, 'Adaptive Responses to Radiation in Cells and
Organisms', dispels the common notion that even the smallest dose of radiation
is harmful."
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