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Scientific Jigsaw Puzzle: Fitting the Pieces of the Low-Level Radiation Debate
New submitter Lasrick writes "Skip past the dry abstract to Jan Beyea's main article for a thorough exploration of what's wrong with current 'safe' levels of low-level radiation exposure. The Bulletin is just releasing its 'Radiation Issue,' which is available for free for two weeks. It explores how the NRC may be changing recommended safe dosages, and how the studies for prolonged exposure have, until recently, been based on one-time exposures (Hiroshima, etc.). New epidemiological studies on prolonged exposure (medical exposures, worker exposures, etc.) are more accurate and tell a different tale. This is a long article, but reads well." Here's the free, downloadable PDF version, too.
Ionizing radiation causes cancer. More ionizing radiation causes more cancer. There is no "safe dose", though there is a certain unavoidable dose. So we're all at risk of cancer if we live long enough.
So a one time event that you can walk away from your body will eventually recover from, but protected exposure to low dosages is a constant battle for your immune system.
And again they lied to us, no superpowers.
There is no threshold below which radiation is 'safe'. There is a threshold below which is become statistically indistinguishable from random events, but that is not the same thing. We've known even "low" levels of radiation can be dangerous -- look at the cancer clusters showing up in TSA screeners. The scanners were declared 'absolutely safe' and had a 'low' level of radiation. There is a long history in the medical field of radiology where equipment, engineering, or our understanding of underlying principles failed and led to death or serious injury. The fact is, there is no such thing as "safe". That doesn't mean don't use the equipment -- it's often the only way to get the information needed (note: full body scanners NOT included, there are alternatives which provide the same information). But it does mean use the least amount of radiation necessary, only use it when necessary, and carefully track a person's exposure -- time, dosage, etc., to identify trends.
Radiation is a daily reality in our lives. Go outside, look up. There it is; the biggest source of radiation in your life (most likely). We can't avoid it... but we can limit it.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Like fallout from nuclear testing and nuclear disasters.
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This research is saying that low-level ionising radiation exposure is dangerous over prolonged exposure and is more dangerous than a single high-dose blast.
I don't really see those things in competition with each other, though it does challenge what the NRC considers "safe".
Skip past the dry abstract
Dry, but a funny read in some ways.
Model fits, both parametric and nonparametric, to the atomic-bomb data support a linear no-threshold model, below 0.1 Sv.
OK so the data implies there is no safe minimum dose based on models derived from numerology and graphs and experience.
On the basis of biologic arguments, the scientific establishment in the United States and many other countries accepts this dose-model down to zero-dose, but there is spirited dissent.
But that doesn't seem to make biochemical sense. (eventually you end up in the radiation equivalent of homeopathy)
a sizeable percentage of this population will receive cumulative doses from the medical profession in excess of 0.1 Sv, making talk of a threshold or other sublinear response below that dose moot for future releases from nuclear facilities or a dirty bomb.
"moot" in science-speak means it doesn't matter. Its not a 4chan reference.
The risks from both medical diagnostic doses and nuclear accident doses can be computed using the linear dose-response model, with uncertainties assigned below 0.1 Sv in a way that captures alternative scientific hypotheses.
A big F you to both the cranks and the real biochemical / biophysical scientists, because no civilized human can go thru life below 0.1 Sv, you can rock on with your homeopathy or astrology or whatever, none of us doctors cares much about your weird little long tail that no one can live in anyway.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Low level radiation may be dangerous, but we have to weight that against the benefit to the corporations that sell airport scanners. Some amount of harm is worth it.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
The way my science teacher explained it to the class was that you will not get an engine to work better by shooting it.
Or to simplify it even further, doing bad things to something rarely has positive results.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
/conspiracy mode on: Its LIES lies lies ... for all those years, and I've suspected them ever since. Now where did I put my tin foil hat? .... Oh noes, radiation made me forget.
Ok, serious, how about radiation levels in medical appliances?
I can remember they use low level barium in hospitals for all kinds of scans.
If even a low level already is unsafe, how many more have been affected by these low levels?
Bach says it all.
"Thus, pressure to update regulations may build, as awareness grows of the five-to-tenfold disparity between the risk estimates per unit dose recommended by scientists today and the older values still used by regulators in cost–benefit calculations for determining allowable doses."
We've heard it many times since the Fukushima failure:
"Most citizens of this planet will experience, on average, less exposure to radiation, from the Fukushima facility, than they would from exposure to 1 or 2 x-ray examinations."
Of course, during an x-ray examination there exists no chance of sucking down a radioactive isotope of cesium- of which Fukushima released, into the atmosphere, a volume on the order of peta becquerels. Little research exists examining the long term effects of low dose internal radiation exposure - the type of exposure that results from the inhalation or ingestion of a radioactive isotope. Radioactive isotopes circulated systemically through the body will continue to release alpha,beta, and gamma radiation directly to internal organs. This presents an obvious contradiction to calculations of external dose to which the internal organs are shielded by clothes and skin.
I've not read the paper yet, but it makes sense from a certain standpoint.
A single high dose causes massive widespread damge. Cells die, immune system ramps up, and rapairs get underway. A cell that might have become cancer dies in a scab, or fall off, or is cleaned up in some way amoung the countless others. Low level raditon damages just a tiny bit. Not enough to cause a reaction or massive cell death. This gives each cell that could become cancerous a better chance to live and become a problem.
Not sure if that is the mechanism (or if they een identified a mechanism yet) but it smacks of truth.
md5sum
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
So a one time event that you can walk away from your body will eventually recover from, but protected exposure to low dosages is a constant battle for your immune system.
And again they lied to us, no superpowers.
That's not true:
Several friends were too close to a uranium spill, and they all got super powers!
Dr. Sterile can never again father children!
Mr. Pustule sickens all he comes near with his hairless tumour-covered body.
Coughing Girl gets sickened by the slightest cold.
Changed inside and out by the radiation, The Corpse is DEAD!
(These aren't mine, I read them on some comedy site years ago.)
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Do note that the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" is a generally an anti-nuclear, scare-mongering publication. These are the people whose count-down to nuclear disaster has been just a few minutes before midnight for decades. Whatever they publish should be viewed with this in mind.
Scanning RFTA, in the end, it says basically nothing at all. They did no studies themselves, but just looked around at ones already done. The key points seem to be:
In the end, given the publication, the conclusion was obvious.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
The standard /. car analogy breaks down in that running my car engine up to 80% of redline RPM for a half hour a day is a pretty stupid idea that will only wear it out faster. Yet daily aerobic exercise seems to be a brilliant idea for long term cardiovascular health.
You can also have hilarious fun making vaccine analogies. "You mean, you'd intentionally inject small amounts of possibly fatal microbes into a healthy body? Madness I tell you! Madness!" Sadly there are highly educated actresses and pr0n models who pretty much use this argument when providing their valuable medical advice, along with the usual folks doing the FUD-for-profit thing.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
You might try posting articles from sources that aren't rabidly anti-nuclear.
Drinking 100 liters of water would kill someone, therefore if 100 persons drink one liter of water, one will die because it scales linearly.
Why haven't radiation oncologists produced good data on this? Many, many people are exposed to substantial radiation doses in the treatment of cancer. And their progress and outcomes is tracked by the tremendous statistical measurements of modern oncology. (This statistical rigor is a big chunk of the improvement in cancer treatment over the last generation or two).
Of course there are huge confounding factors, including that the patient already has cancer, is exposed to carcinogenic chemotherapy regimens, and so on. But it would seem to me that with such a large dataset--along with the long-term tracking--the quantitative danger and damage due to smaller and smaller doses of radiation would be measurable.
Ionizing radiation causes cancer. More ionizing radiation causes more cancer.
Of course. The question is, how much more cancer is caused by a given dose of radiation?
Unfortunately, this is a question that the paper in question does not answer, because it completely neglects to mention actual numbers. (The pretty colored graphs have units of "excess relative risk." How do you convert that to deaths? You can't. What are the units-- per year? Per lifetime? they don't say. Relative to what? They don't say.) I'd like to see a number, like "excess cancers per year per sievert of exposure," but they don't give one. They compare different studies, but never discuss whether the differences are statistically significant.
There is no "safe dose", though there is a certain unavoidable dose.
That is a question. That is what is known as the "linear no threshold" model-- but although these authors assert the validity of that model, you can't tell it from the data they show. Figure 1 shows too much scatter below 0.3 Sv to give much information about thresholds, and Figure 2 sure looks like it would be well fit by a threshold model.
In short, I'd like to have seen an article with real information.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
1. They claim that LNT applies to prolonged exposure, and that the risks are actually higher than the single exposure data from Hiroshima. Examine Figure 2 in the PDF report and you'll see that while the data is within 1 sigma of LNT for the range of exposures shown, it actually appears to follow a quadratic curve, with lower ERR up to 0.25-0.3Gy, 2.5x-3x the "low-level" dose, then the risk is higher than LNT with higher cumulative exposure. From that chart, prolonged exposure to low-level (cumulative) is indeed a lower risk than a single equivalent dose. Prolonged exposure to high-level (cumulative) may be greater than a single equivalent dose. They're using a limited subset of the data that falls within 1 sigma in order to support their claim that LNT applies to prolonged doses, yet an analysis of the data doesn't really support that claim.
2. While they mention locations with higher than average natural background radiation, they don't ever address the facts about those locations. Namely, that they have ~ average cancer rates and longer average life spans, even though the cumulative lifetime dose significantly exceeds 0.1sv. A quote from that site:
From BEIR V, National Research Council report on Health Effects of Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation:
In areas of high natural background radiation, an increased frequency of chromosome aberrations has been noted repeatedly. The increases are consistent with those seen in radiation workers and in persons exposed at high dose levels, although the magnitudes of the increases are somewhat higher than predicted. No increase in the frequency of cancer documented in populations residing in areas of high natural background radiation.
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The 'free, downloadable PDF' link in the article goes to an HTML page wrapping the PDF. Saving this page won't get you the PDF.
Here is the direct link to download just the PDF.
I'm looking forward to reading the entire article when I have time.
If the linear no threshold model was true then cancer rates would correlate with altitude (as background radiation does).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The biggest source of ionizing radiation , is the background radiation (from a combo of the ground/environment (granite is different to say , chalk ground), sleeping near somebody, what you eat, the own atoms in your body which decay....). In the sky, except the UVA/UVB which should be pretty resonnable, it is mostly non ionizing UV,
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The biggest source of ionizing radiation , is the background radiation (from a combo of the ground/environment (granite is different to say , chalk ground), sleeping near somebody, what you eat, the own atoms in your body which decay, medicine xray etc...). In the sky, except the UVA/UVB which should be pretty resonnable, it is mostly non ionizing EM.
ETA: I shoulkd have previewed.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I expected to see this http://xkcd.com/radiation/ as approximately the second post, but it's nowhere to be found! /. truly is slipping into obscurity.
Of course. The question is, how much more cancer is caused by a given dose of radiation?
Unfortunately, this is a question that the paper in question does not answer, because it completely neglects to mention actual numbers. (The pretty colored graphs have units of "excess relative risk." How do you convert that to deaths? You can't. What are the units-- per year? Per lifetime? they don't say. Relative to what? They don't say.) I'd like to see a number, like "excess cancers per year per sievert of exposure," but they don't give one. They compare different studies, but never discuss whether the differences are statistically significant.
As the article states, the graph is taken from another study, Preston et al (2007) Solid Cancer Incidence in Atomic Bomb Survivors: 1958–1998. You can find many tables with actual numbers there. The caption on the graph also answers some of your questions:
FIG. 3. Solid cancer dose–response function. The thick solid line is
the fitted linear gender-averaged excess relative risk (ERR) dose response
at age 70 after exposure at age 30 based on data in the 0- to 2-Gy dose
range. The points are non-parametric estimates of the ERR in dose categories.
The thick dashed line is a nonparametric smooth of the categoryspecific
estimates and the thin dashed lines are one standard error above
and below this smooth.
Visit the
So death is one thing surely to worry about, but what I really want to know is how much more of a mutant will I become, or what kind of mutant, or how powerful?
These questions are important also.
Well, it would correlate with latitude as well.
That is, if cosmic radiation were in fact the main location-dependent factor that caused cancer.
But since cosmic radiation dose is something on the order of 0.5 millisievert per year, it's probably not significant enough to see the signal over the noise, assuming that there are other sources of cancer.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
because they only track the patients for 5 years. after that, you're "cured" so people fall out of the research pool. either that or you're dead from the recurring cancer or disease caused by the cancer treatment.
you've got to track for decades to capture enough data on cancer genesis by radiation.
Eat an occasional banana, some dental xrays exposures, share a bed, take a flight, add a little radon, coal ash, granite, concrete, bircks, your going to be close enough that the question of extrapolations don't even come into play. The cost benefit analysis can be done a simple linear extension. Too bad for the guys who want a free pass on increased exposure. I'm convinced that my DNA replication is sufficiently erratic that it does not need the benefit of an additional dose of radiation to keep me healthy.
From what I understand, this is not absolutely definitive, but cancer researchers at Lawrence Berkeley Lab published a paper where they used imaging of cellular responses to radiation damage to show that at low levels, it appears that cells repair DNA damage due to radiation very effectively.
Seriously, follow that link, and learn.
I worked for DOE operating a reactor for plutonium production.
Charge/Discharge was a time when the horizontal process tubes had new fuel elements
inserted, which in turn pushed out radiated fuel elements (the product).
The front face and rear face of the reactor needed to be accessed to do this. The caps removed
from each end of the process tubes by hand, so part of the job. There was a lot of primary water involved.
When I first started it was full rain gear to keep from getting soaked from the water which I have had to spit
out before, progressing to filtered air hoods so fully enveloped.
Getting "Crapped up" a local term for contaminated was common place and one just washed it off
in areas made for this and no big deal, this also progressed to being a bad thing.
I was good for 300 rem (3 Sv) a week, 300 rem (30 Sv) a year, and believe me I was used for it.
I had no problems working around radiation until my quota was used, being a "radiation whore" was
a common term in jest.
I fathered to two sons while receiving the most radiation of my time there.
Both are were born with no hair and no teeth, perfectly normal in every way.
Myself, I'm very healthy, far more so than others my age.
Alpha, Beta, Gamma, worked around em all, as have so many others in this area.
TFA is from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which is well known for its misleading literature and leftish bias.
Furthermore, consider that they're talking about dosages of 0.1 Sievert or more, which is still pretty high, given that the average US background radiation is about 0.003 Sievert/year. With the high scale they're considering, it would be impossible to detect the existence of hormesis. From what I've read, there is an optimum level of radiation, in the range of 0.005 to 0.010 Sievert/year.
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but it smacks of truth.
intuition. the best kind of truth...
some research (no links... i found it while wiki walking) indicates that lower exposures over longer times reduce the risk somewhat, which seems in stark contrast to TFA. sort of like reciprocity failure on photographic film, or the thresholded linear thing.
I'm guessing you mean 300 millirem. 300 rem would have you in hospital or dead.
The Beyea paper discusses human epidemiology. This is a completely fruitless endeavor. People have been trying for 60 years to determine the human body's response to low levels of ionization, and they've failed competely. The reasons for the failure are simple. Scientists can't do controlled experiments with human subjects, and scientists can't knowingly subject human subjects to harm.
Since you can't do good science with human test subjects, the obvious alternative is to use animals. Animal studies have been done, and they generally suggest that LNT is wrong, and that radiation hormesis occurs at low dose rates.
What is the point of expending so much effort endlessly rehashing garbage data from humans when good data are available from animals? I suspect that the point is either (a) to keep epidemiologists employed, or (b) that we don't want to compare ourselves to animals.
We've seen the same kind of junk science from epidemiologists when it comes to nonionizing radiation, such as the radiation from cell phones. Another good example of junk epidemiology is the recent high-profile media coverage of junk-science claims that eating red meat vastly increases your risk of death. (Hint: you can't control for the other variables that differ between steak-eating construction workers and arugula-nibbling lawyers from Beverly Hills.)
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One side of science says radiation 'therapy' is used to cure cancer and on another bunch of scientists claim it causes cancer.
$cience is so biased by financial incentives for so many reasons it's no wonder it's hard to figure out what is truth and what is lies.
The coal industry is massively funded and the only technology that can compete on large scale and cost is Nuclear.
If I was a coal industry marketer, I would be slipping Greenpeace and others money annonymously for campaigning against Nuclear - it's far far cheaper than paid advertising! A few million bucks to people that work for their passion goes a long way!
A list of some scientific studies on the effects of tritium, with references, in case there is any doubt regarding Triated water's effect on living beings.
Tritium is biologically mutagenic *because* it's a low energy emitter. This characteristic makes readily absorbed by surrounding cells. The available evidence from studies conducted journal a list of effects. From those works;
Tritium can be inhaled, ingested, or absorbed through skin. Eating food containing 3H can be even more damaging than drinking 3H bound in water. Consequently, an estimated radiation dose based only on ingestion of tritiated water may underestimate the health effects if the person has also consumed food contaminated with tritium. (Komatsu)
Studies indicate that lower doses of tritium can cause more cell death (Dobson, 1976), mutations (Ito) and chromosome damage (Hori) per dose than higher tritium doses. Tritium can impart damage which is two or more times greater per dose than either x-rays or gamma rays.
(Straume) (Dobson, 1976) There is no evidence of a threshold for damage from 3H exposure; even the smallest amount of tritium can have negative health impacts. (Dobson, 1974) Organically bound tritium (tritium bound in animal or plant tissue) can stay in the body for 10 years or more.
It's often said "of all the elements in nuclear waste tritium is one of the more harmless ones" and while it's more benign than most other radioactive effluents it's toxicity should not be under-estimated.
Tritium can cause mutations, tumors and cell death. (Rytomaa) Tritiated water is associated with significantly decreased weight of brain and genital tract organs in mice (Torok) and can cause irreversible loss of female germ cells in both mice and monkeys even at low concentrations. (Dobson, 1979) (Laskey) Tritium from tritiated water can become incorporated into DNA, the molecular basis of heredity for living organisms. DNA is especially sensitive to radiation. (Hori) A cell's exposure to tritium bound in DNA can be even more toxic than its exposure to tritium in water. (Straume)(Carr)
First, as an isotope of hydrogen (the cell's most ubiquitous element), tritium can be incorporated into essentially all portions of the living machinery; and it is not innocuous -- deaths have occurred in industry from occupational overexposure. R. Lowry Dobson, MD, PhD. (1979)
References;
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I'm guessing you mean 300 millirem. 300 rem would have you in hospital or dead.
Yes, it's wrong. I'm sorry about that.
After posting I thought I'd just forgotten one 0 for 3000.
I had 300 mrem (0.003 sieverts) a week and 3000 mrem (3 rem) (0.03 sieverts) a year, to give for the cause.
Sieverts are new to me, it's a measurement I'd never heard of until the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
The reactor I operated is dead and buried (literally).