'There is no safe level of radiation." For the last 30 years, my
colleagues and I at the Energy Probe Research Foundation have held that
view, and espoused it through books, media appearances and presentations
to regulatory bodies, helping in no small measure to tighten Canada's
radiation standards. The science on radiation as published by official
bodies, we knew, made clear that any dose of radiation, no matter how
small, carries with it an additional risk of contracting cancer. The
upshot was a better-safe-than-sorry stance: Don't frivolously accept
X-rays; take special care in disposing of smoke detectors, worry about
routine releases of radiation from nuclear facilities.
This stance is now reeling. Low levels of radiation, science is
increasingly telling us, are not only safe, they are actually healthful.
It may be more prudent to worry about getting too little radiation than
too much.
The latest book to question the conventional wisdom on radiation
comes from Springer-Verlag, a venerable academic science publisher whose
stable of writers over the years has included some 150 Nobel laureates.
Springer's book is not for the pop-cure reader, as attested to by its
$240 price tag and its intimidating title, Radiation Hormesis and the
Linear-No-Threshold Assumption.
The title, however technical, tells the tale of a controversy of
immense implications. Hormesis describes something that does harm in
large doses but good in small doses. We are all familiar with such
hormetic relationships, even if we don't use the term -- we need various
vitamins and minerals for our survival, including ones with scary names
such as arsenic, but if we overdose on some, we can suffer disability or
death. The trick is to get enough to avoid a deficiency in a substance
we need, but not so much that it will poison us. An even better trick is
to identify the ideal dose -- to be able to max out on our intake of
vitamins, say, while avoiding any harm. This trick -- understanding when
we are getting too much of a good thing -- is the essence of the rapidly
growing scientific inquiry into hormesis.
The other head-scratching term in the book's
title--linear-no-threshold assumption, or LNT for short -- refers to the
assumption that radiation is an exception to the hormesis rule, and that
radiation can never be a good thing. Unlike other substances, which have
a threshold between a good dose and bad, the conventional wisdom has
assumed that radiation has no threshold -- every dose is bad, and the
bigger the dose, the badder it gets, in a straight line relationship.
This is the linear-no-threshold assumption, with "assumption" an
all-important word that needs to be taken literally. While no one
disputes that high doses of radiation cause harm, no one has proof that
low levels cause harm. Surprisingly, the scientists and government
bodies that adhere to the LNT assumption will tell you that no proof of
harm at low levels is even possible because the risk is too low to
measure statistically. In the absence of proof, they say, the only
prudent course is to play it safe by assuming that low levels of
radiation cause harm.
But is it safe to assume that humans, who evolved in a radiation-rich
environment, and who live in a world that continually bombards us with
natural, background radiation, would be better off by curtailing our
exposure to radiation? "Literally millions of lives are less healthy
because they have been convinced that living in radiation-deficient
environments is healthy; lives are lost in not implementing effective
low-dose radiation therapy to treat cancer; lives are lost out of fear
of diagnostic radiation that saves lives," writes Charles Sanders, the
book's author and a participant in radiobiological research over half a
century.
Mr. Sanders makes his case for the robustness of hormesis research by
citing hundreds of studies -- this heavily footnoted scientific text
does not make for easy reading. For those readers not interested in
ploughing through descriptions of studies that often infer the effects
of radiation--it would be unethical to deliberately expose a large
healthy population to radiation for the sake of an experiment --the
book's real-life scientific studies will more than suffice.
Take the case of "an almost perfect study in a human population that
demonstrates the highly significant protective effects of
near-continuous exposure to gamma radiation." This case involved more
than 180 apartment buildings that had been constructed in Taiwan in the
early 1980s using recycled steel that was subsequently discovered to
have been contaminated with radioactive cobalt-60. The 10,000 people who
were housed there received large doses of radiation over a period of
nine to 20 years that, according to LNT theory, should have led to a
total of 302 cancer deaths over the 1983-2003 period studied, 232 of
which would have been ordinarily expected had no radiation exposure
occurred, with the additional 70 stemming from the exposure. To the
researchers' surprise, however, only seven cancer deaths were found, 225
fewer than would have occurred had the buildings been free of radiation.
Instead of radiation increasing the death toll by 30%, it may have
reduced the death toll by a staggering 97%.
The number of birth defects among children born in this radioactive
environment also confounded LNT theory. Instead of the 48 defects
expected, just three occurred.
Mr. Sanders' book deals primarily with health issues: leukemia as
well as cancer of the breast, lung, liver, and central nervous system;
birth defects; the immune system; inflammatory diseases; and longevity
(one of several studies that he cites shows an increased average
lifespan of 10.4 years among Americans). But he also touches on other
matters of immense importance, such as the cost to society of dealing
with perverse regulations -- a cost that could amount to trillions of
dollars -- and the politicization of science. The LNT camp has been
trying to discredit hormesis by stifling debate, rather than by
conducting peer-reviewed counter studies.
Mr. Sanders' book is not the first to deal with radiation hormesis
and it won't be the last -- research in this field has been increasing
at an exponential rate and can only grow unless it can be disproven. The
safest course for society is to get on with the research.
LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com - Lawrence Solomon is executive director
of Energy Probe and its hormesis library, and the author of The Deniers.
Radiation Hormesis and the Linear-No-Threshold Assumption by Charles L.
Sanders, Springer, 2010, 217 pp including index.
$240.
;)