AW: AW: [ RadSafe ] AW: Low level radiation and cancer:

[Rainer.Facius at dlr.de]

Christian:

 

Thank you for providing the pointer to the BBC Interview. 

 

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/programmes/hardtalk/4738393.stm <http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/programmes/hardtalk/4738393.stm> >

 

In the HARDtalk interview broadcast on 2 August, Sarah Montague talks to Indian Nobel Prize winning economist, Amartya Sen.

 

HARDtalk can be seen on BBC World at 03:30 GMT, 0830 GMT, 1530 GMT, 1830 GMT, 2330 GMT. It can be seen on BBC News 24 at 04:30 and 23:30

 

Unfortunately no transcript is available. I tried to extract the relevant data from listening to the interview.

 

>From 6:50 minutes to 8:05 minutes into the interview, Sen made the following statements:

 

In 1979 life expectancy in India was 54 years, 14 years less than the 68 years for China.

 

Today Chinese life expectancy is 71 years and the Indian life expectancy is only half the previous 14 years, i.e., 7 years less, i.e., 64 years.

 

Life expectancy today in Kerala is 76 years which therefore is 12 years above the average Indian life expectancy.

 

Yet, after some further seconds thoughts I think that it is unreasonable to even try to correlate this with the 'Kerala' HBRA.

 

The actual HBRA is restricted to part of the Karunagappally district of Kerala. In the HBRA part, around 100 000 people out of the 400 000 people living in Karunagappally are exposed to higher natural background radiation, If the life expectancy of the HBRA population were responsible to raise the average Indian life expectancy of 64 years to the 76 years in Kerala, they would have to life 4200 years. 

 

In comparison to cancer, I think life expectancy is an even much more convoluted mix of genetic, environmental, cultural - including religious, socio-economic and who knows what else factors that notwithstanding its more precise identification I consider it hopeless to try to disentangle any influence of background radiation on this 'measure'. The same probably holds not only in Kerala but everywhere.

 
Kind regards, Rainer
 

________________________________

Von: Christian Hofmeyr [mailto:chris.hofmeyr at webmail.co.za]
Gesendet: Fr 12.08.2005 14:36
An: Facius, Rainer
Cc: Bernard Cohen; radsafe at radlab.nl
Betreff: Re: AW: [ RadSafe ] AW: Low level radiation and cancer:



Rainer,
Thanks for your response.  I think we agree on important
points. <...>

 Life duration statistics are probably much
more reliable than health (or cause of death) statistics in
many interesting places.   Put simply, this could
indirectly (per implication) provide answers concerning
hormesis and even LNT, mindful of the collective dose
prediction.  The necessary caveats apply.
I gathered from a recent BBC interview with a Nobel
Prize-winning Indian economist that the 'traditional'
differential between India and China in average life
expectancy was 14 years, 57 in India versus 71 in China.
  The exception was the Indian state of Kerala, where life
expectancy was 76(!).

<...>

Chris.Hofmeyr at webmail.co.za