[ RadSafe ] Tritium a carcinogen?

[Steven Dapra]

April 15

         Thank you, John.

         I did an Alta Vista search for "tritium" "carcinogen" and got a 
pile of answers, about 99 percent of them from anti-nuclear sources.

         The anti-nukers use the following pejoratives to describe 
tritium's alleged carcinogenic abilities:  dangerous, now-recognized as a, 
known, potential, considered to be, and probable.  It would seem that the 
anti-nukers can't decide what to think about this stuff.

         According to a question and answer section, the EPA (at 
http://www.epa.gov/radiation/radionuclides/tritium.htm) says of tritium, 
"As with all ionizing radiation, exposure to tritium increases the risk of 
developing cancer. However, tritium is one of the least dangerous 
radionuclides because it emits very weak radiation and leaves the body 
relatively quickly."

         Of course this 'increase of risk' is based on LNT.  (Let's not get 
a thread going on LNT, *please*.)

         Rats are like humans.  Hmmmmmm . . .   Haven't establishment 
scientists even began to express some skepticism about extrapolating from 
animal studies to humans?

Steven Dapra
sjd at swcp.com



At 10:24 AM 4/15/06 -0700, you wrote:
Steven et al

I don't know about humans but tritium causes cancer in rats. See the paper

OCCURRENCE OF MAMMARY TUMORS IN RATS BY TRITIUM BETA-RAYS AND BY 200 Kvp
X-RAYS
N.J. Gragtmans, D.K. Myers, J. R. Johnson, A.R. Jones, and L.D. Johnson;
AECL-8425, Radiation Research 99 (1984) 636-650.

That study was done so we could apply the results to humans. The assumption
being that rats are like humans in that regard.

John
  _________________
John R Johnson, Ph.D.
*****

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