[ RadSafe ] RE: dose RATE of ANY Medicine is the decisive variable

[Muckerheide, Jim (CDA)]

Dear Rainer,

Please note that the paper on the Taiwan experience is not a completed epi study. It was produced after about 6 years during which Drs. Luan, Chen, and colleagues demonstrated that hormetic effects are feasible in this population.  Their conclusions are based on simple knowledge of reported cancers (with activist media reporting by the "Victims Association," and anti-nuclear groups).  This has been suppressed (as with many other "inconvenient" studies) by the rad protection authorities, with Peter Chang, the virulently anti-nuclear MD (who is funded to indefinitely monitor many of the thousands of "victims," and has since set up a new "radiation protection group" - putting on a more recent veneer of being more "rational" :-).  

Dr. Luan, Chen et al., and friends around the world, have urged Taiwan government agencies and officials, through many high-level contacts, including several ambassadors (e.g., the U.S. and Germany) to get a formal epi study undertaken.  Such people have generally "promised" to get some action, and then disappeared in silence.  The definitive cancer data back to 1982-5, and data to age-adjust the population, and other demographic factors, including the background of the "new residents" before moving in 1982-5, is needed.

Dr. Chang has reported epi data, e.g., at IRPA-11 2004 in Madrid.  But we have never seen anything actually pub'd.  He has argued that the population is young enough to have lower cancer rates.  We have been informed that people generally moved with extended families that included older parents and grandparents that would not have changed the age distribution enough to explain the discrepancy.

Regards, Jim 


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rainer.Facius at dlr.de [mailto:Rainer.Facius at dlr.de] 
> Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2006 12:28 PM
> To: nbcsoc at hotmail.com; hflong at pacbell.net; 
> tedrock at starpower.net; Muckerheide, Jim (CDA); radsafe at radlab.nl
> Cc: rad-sci-l at WPI.EDU
> Subject: AW: dose RATE of ANY Medicine is the decisive variable
> 
> 
> Dear colleague,
> 
> a major (if not the most important) point which 
> Gregoire&Cleland attempt to make is that we have to identify 
> the proper time scale which is characteristic for the action 
> of the defensive mechanisms undoing the damage inflicted on 
> the molecular level by radiation. The fuzziness of their 
> database allowed them just to rule out total dose (which does 
> not at all relate to time) and the average/maximum dose per 
> week. Their best guess for the proper time interval turned 
> out to be the day. So, in the spirit of their argument, dose 
> rates other than per day may not be useful as a predictor of 
> cancer risk. 
> 
> I concur with your characterization of the chronic Taiwan 
> residential radiation exposures as a most important data base 
> relevant for the assessment of the risk from chronic low LET 
> radiation. On the other hand, the presentation of the 
> epidemiological data (in contrast to the dosimetric) in the 
> publications which I know, e.g., Is chronic radiation an 
> effective prophylaxis against cancer? J. Am. Phys. Surg. 
> 9#1(2004)6-10 leaves too many possible and legitimate 
> questions unanswered to count as a definite account of that 
> experience. (I do not claim that you don't have answers but 
> just that you did not present them in this paper). 
> 
> I sincerely hope that you and your colleagues will continue 
> to evaluate this data base and provide a follow-up report 
> which is less prone to valid criticism. (Any criticism if 
> offered with sufficient precision is valid.)
> 
> Best regards, Rainer
> 
> 
> ________________________________
> 
> Von: yuan-chi luan [mailto:nbcsoc at hotmail.com]
> Gesendet: Do 07.09.2006 04:33
> An: hflong at pacbell.net; tedrock at starpower.net; 
> jim.muckerheide at state.ma.us; Facius, Rainer; radsafe at radlab.nl
> Cc: rad-sci-l at WPI.EDU; Rad_Sci_Health at yahoogroups.com
> Betreff: RE: dose RATE of ANY Medicine is the decisive variable
> 
> 
> 
> Dear Howard and all friends:
> 
> I think your still remember the most coincidentally 
> experiments conducted by human beings on the health effects 
> of radiation in the Taiwan Co-60 contaminated apartments 
> incident. I would like to present you the dose rate per hour, 
> per day and per year in the incident for your consideration 
> in this issue:
> 
>  
> 
> 1, The Taiwan Co-60 incident was first discovered in 1992, 
> all the apartments were built in 1981~1984, and most in 1983. 
> When a big scale searching program was conducted in 1996, 
> there were many apartments surveyed with dose rate per hour 
> in greater than 1 mSv/hr in the key positions (of course much 
> higher in 1983). The key positions are the sofa in the living 
> room, the bed in the bedroom and the stove in the kitchen or 
> the table in the study room.       
> 
>  
> 
> 2, In the survey operation, the dose rate per day in the 
> apartments had been roughly calculated right away, it was 
> equivalent to dose rate per hour at sofa multiple 12hrs¤Qdose 
> rate per hour at bed multiple 8 hrs¤Qdose rate per hour at 
> stove or study table multiple 4hrs, and then divided the 
> doses by 24 hrs. The dose rate was always lower than 24 mSv/day.    
> 
>  
> 
> 1.      In the survey operation, the dose rate per year could 
> be also calculated right away. It was equivalent to dose rate 
> per day multiple 365 days, and modified with various factors, 
> such the days would not be 365 and the radiation would decay. 
> The dose rate per year was averaged to be about 50 mSv/y, the 
> highest one was about 1000 mSv/y in 1983, then it could be 
> based for roughly determining the dose rate and the total 
> doses in different year 
> 
> 4. The most important of the incident was the health effects 
> of the chronic radiation we observed in Taiwan Co-60 incident 
> was that the cancer mortalities of the resident was sharply 
> reduced to a few percentage of the general population, even 
> the dose rate per year and accumulated doses to quite high.  
> 
>  
> 
> Best regards
> 
>  
> 
> Y.C. Luan  Senior Scientist of NuSTA and Consultant of NBC Society