[cdn-nucl-l] LNT model

["Edward Oleen" <eoleen@earthlink.net>]

Phillipe: Your table came thru not-at-all, and
neither did your attachment: could you please
e-mail it to me? eoleen@earthlink.net

Jeremy:

Thank you for the paper. I fear I didn't express
my question/understanding correctly - I've been a
bit short of sleep this past week or two.

Some thoughts...

I've read somewhere that there is an area, in
India, as I recall, with a rather high level of
background radiation, due to a large ore body
close to the surface, and that the residents of
the area have no significant increase in cancers
over the rest of the population.  Likewise, the
populations living at extreme altitudes - Tibet
and the Andes, for example - are also subject to
increased background dosages, as, I would suppose,
are those who live at high latitudes - i.e. the
Inuit, etc.

Likewise, I would expect that there would be
noticeable effects on plants growing in areas with
higher-than-normal background radiation - such as
the Okla area.  Again, to the best of my
knowledge, there is no increase in mutation rate,
or other radiation effects, in these areas.

While obviously anecdotal, and not controlled for
all sorts of effects, this indicates to me that
the curve of effects vs dosage (whole-body
life-long in this case) probably takes a nose dive
to zero, or close to it, at some level higher than
the "normal" background dosage.

Given that existing fossil-fuel-fired power plants
are uncontrolled for radiation emissions, and that
very few, if any of us, walk around with
whole-body dosimeters, much less have them
properly analyzed, there would seem to be a rather
large uncertainty in simply measuring the dosage
John Q. Citizen is exposed to over a life-time.

I am reminded of an effect in photography called
"reciprocity failure": at the ends of the
exposure-vs-image-density curve, most of which is
linear, the curve becomes distinctly NON-LINEAR:
at the high end, essentially all of the emulsion
is exposed, and thus further exposure has little
or no additional effect, and at the low exposure
end of the curve too little of the emulsion is
exposed to form an image.  (This is obviously an
entirely different phenomenon than ionizing
radiation exposure: I cite it as a definition, not
an analogy...)

 Thus, I would therefore hold as suspect any model
which extrapolated linearly thru the zero-point as
subject to "reciprocity failure": especially with
something like cancer, which is known to have, in
addition, non-radiation causes, and where the
"radiation cause" varies so much with time and
place.

Do airline flight personnel have increased levels
of radiation-induced cancers? They, after all,
spend much of their working hours above much of
the Earth's atmosphere, and are thus exposed to
increased background.  Likewise, do those who live
for most of their lives in stone houses (such as
English manor houses and palaces...) have a
greater-than-normal incidence of various forms of
cancer?

Am I missing something here? Is "natural"
radiation harmless, and "man-made", "artificial",
radiation dangerous?  Is Ralph Nader in control?

Am I nuts? Or do I need to get some sleep?