[ RadSafe ] Mohan Doss's response to my comments on his hormesis petition

[Peter Crane]

In his reply to my comments on the hormesis petitions filed with the NRC by Carol Marcus, Mark Miller, and himself, Mohan Doss writes: 

"Regarding increased thyroid cancers detected in Chernobyl among children: High doses would indeed cause thyroid cancers, but the dose limit Carol Marcus has suggested is low. Therefore, referring to Chernobyl data where the children had high doses to thyroid, and had increased cancers, has no relevance to the issue at hand.  In the above argument, the effects of increased thyroid screening do not come into the picture at all."

Mohan, your petition to the NRC says that it "supports and supplements" Carol's petition. But her position on the crucially important Chernobyl data is quite different from yours, if I understand your position correctly. She writes:

"The increase in thyroid cancers was found in children under 15 years of age in 1987, the year after the accident. However, the radiation doses were too low to have caused this, and there was no dose-response relationship. In addition, the timing was off --- the mean latent period for radiation induced thyroid cancer is about 28 years. However, the increase was highly likely due to a mass screening effect. Occult thyroid cancer is actually extremely common...."

In sum, her view is that the radiation doses to the thyroid from Chernobyl were too low to be relevant to the LNT debate, whereas your view is that they were too high to be relevant. 

Your example shows that it is not only LNT supporters who believe that the post-Chernobyl thyroid cancers were caused by radiation. Maybe you should explain, for the benefit of Carol and everyone else on this listserv, why this is the prevalent view.

Peter Crane, NRC Counsel for Special Projects (retired)