[ RadSafe ] Port Hope showing hormetic effect ?

[Jaro Franta]

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2010/11/12/lawrence-solomon-port-hope-%e2%8
0%94-a-hot-spot-that-may-be-cool/

Port Hope - a hot spot that may be cool
National Post
Lawrence Solomon  November 12, 2010

Nuclear workers in Port Hope contract fewer cancers

Thirty-five years ago, Canada's first radioactive cleanup of a contaminated
town was ordered for Port Hope, Ont., after my organization, Energy Probe,
proved and publicized gross violations of radiation safety standards. Today,
35 years and many protests with many high-profile environmentalists later,
the issue of contamination has not gone away. The earth-moving equipment is
back for yet another cleanup and local environmental groups are bringing in
yet another high-profile anti-nuclear activist - Dr. Helen Caldicott, head
of Physicians for Nuclear Responsibility, who is calling for the town's
16,500 residents to be relocated before its "carcinogenic time bomb"
explodes.

One thing has changed, though. My organization is no longer confident that
low levels of radiation, such as those that now remain in Port Hope, pose a
danger. To the contrary, a growing body of evidence indicates that low
levels of radiation could actually confer a health benefit. Rather than
continuing the 10-year $260-million-plus cleanup that has just begun, or
contemplating the more extreme measure of closing down the town, the safest
course to take may well be to move out the bulldozers instead of the
townsfolk.

Port Hope, a pretty town on the shores of Lake Ontario 100 kilometres east
of Toronto and home to the country's largest rehabilitation involving
low-level radioactive waste, may be the most researched, rehabilitated,
remediated and monitored community in the world. Port Hope became a major
uranium refining town during the Second World War as part of the Manhattan
Project, under the auspices of a federal Crown corporation, Eldorado Mining
and Refining Ltd. Since the first cleanup began in the mid-1970s, various
government agencies have moved some 100,000 tonnes of contaminated soils to
other locations, have managed another two million tonnes and, after the next
move of contaminated soils is completed in 2020, have plans to supervise the
new repository for the next 500 years. Meanwhile, other government agencies
have overseen 30-odd environmental studies and 13 epidemiological studies of
the health of residents who may have been contaminated over the decades.

The many studies generally show that the town's level of radioactivity, and
the health of its residents, is no different from that found in other
communities. That doesn't allay the fears of many, who fear radioactive hot
spots, who rightly point out that no full-scale independent public
environmental assessment has ever been carried out and who note that
official bodies - those in Canada included - state there is no safe level of
radiation.

Yet the view that radiation is dangerous in small doses is no less
contestable than the conclusions of the many studies done to date. All of
the official bodies that state that low levels of radiation are dangerous
freely admit that they have no proof for their belief. In the absence of
information, they say, the only prudent course is to assume that radiation
poses danger in small doses as well as large.

Yet the information is now coming in, say many scientists who study the
effects of low levels of radiation on human health. And it shows that low
levels of radiation tend to be healthful, or hormetic, to use the medical
term.

The planet has many regions that are naturally high in radiation because of
the minerals in the ground or because of elevation - the higher up you live,
the higher the dose of radiation you receive. Some parts of North America
are 10 times more radioactive than others. Those who live in high-radiation
regions tend to contract fewer cancers. One study found a 25% higher cancer
mortality rate in the lowland states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama,
than in the Rocky Mountain states of Idaho, Colorado and New Mexico, where
residents receive five times as much radiation. Colorado does especially
well, with a cancer mortality rate 30% below the national average for males
and 25% for females.

Our government assumes that radiation plays no role in protecting the
townsfolk of Port Hope, but that assumption, too, has no basis. The studies
of nuclear workers in Port Hope show them to contract fewer cancers, and to
live longer, than the general population of Port Hope, and also those who
live in Port Hope contract fewer leukemias than those who live in the nearby
area.

Could the benefit of working in proximity to radiation be an indication of
radiation's beneficial effect? Port Hope residents don't know. "The studies
weren't designed to look for hormetic effects," explained Patsy Thompson,
director deneral of the federal government's Directorate of Environmental
and Radiation Protection and Assessment.

But Port Hope residents should know. "If I were from Port Hope, what I would
be asking for is a full environmental assessment, and a public hearing that
gives the people who live in that area the right to question and
cross-examine the scientists and so-called experts who draft the
conclusions," said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., another environmentalist whom
local organizers brought to Port Hope in an earlier protest that attempted
to get at the truth of what radiation means for Port Hope. "I can't
understand that there's any reason why that kind of hearing shouldn't
exist."

There is no reason. A full assessment that allowed all parties to bring
forward independent environmental and health experts, and then have them
withstand expert challenges, would at a minimum remove uncertainty and spur
swift remediation - this picture postcard town, which boasts more heritage
buildings per capita than anywhere else in Canada, loses tourist dollars as
well as pride of place whenever its environment is disparaged.

At a maximum, the evidence would show that radiation in small doses enhances
life, that there's no reason to fear invisible threats in their air or
water, and that $260-million doesn't need to be spent fixing a non-problem.
The endeavour would be worthy. Port Hope should live up to its name.

Financial Post
LawrenceSolomon at nextcity.com
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance
Institute and the author of The Deniers.
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http://www.thestar.com/opinion/letters/article/889858--no-impact-on-port-hop
e-residents 

This 85-year-old 1940s employee of Eldorado Nuclear remembers when FARE
(Families Against Radiation Exposure) earlier introduced another "foremost
expert on radiological illnesses." His name was Dr. Durakovic of the Uranium
Medical Research Centre and he said to leave low-level radioactive waste
where it is present. 

I remember playing with six buddies in a huge pile of LLRW complete with
uranium mill tailings. We tunnelled in it, slid down its slopes and skinny
dipped in a nearby tadpole pond that was topped with leach from this very
mound. We are still active golfers today.

As for the long-term storage of LLRW, read the Star's Oct. 17, 2009 account,
Life returns to an eerie Chernobyl, where reporter Rosie DiManno said
Chernobyl's lands had become a unique new ecosystem. 

And to think that FARE would inveigle the federal government to clean up
this harmless material at a cost of $260 million when a 2007 survey by the
organization responsible for its cleanup, Port Hope Area Initiatives, found
that fewer than one in 10 respondents identified LLRW as a concern. 

Bill Tuer, Cobourg


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