Re: The FEAR is Our own worst enemy.

[Al Tschaeche <antatnsu@pacbell.net>]

See comment and question below.

Tom Mohaupt wrote:

> Let's look at radon. Someone says that radon causes lung cancer and we have
> to mitigate it. Mitigation will save tens of thousands of lives. Great! How
> many of you have seen a plan for a scientifically valid follow-up of
> whether those tens of thousands of lives are actually saved? I don't think
> there is a plan. That's a problem.

Only too true.  I have, for decades, asked everyone I could think of to come up with a
method of measuring the benefit(s) of  radiation safety measures implemented at
facilities at which I worked.  No one could.  So we kept on spending money without any
way to tell if the money we spent was buying us any real increase in safety and
health.  That doesn't seem too rational, especially for private companies that need to
tell their stockholders how well the bottom line is growing, when it isn't, or isn't
as fast as the stockholders would like it to.  The US government is the worst offender
in this area.  It spends billions with no way to measure the benefits (if any).

> Most of us in the radiation safety
> business check to see if our corrective actions are effective. Here's a
> multi-billion dollar program that has no check for effectiveness. If
> smoking goes up, lung cancers go up. If smoking goes down, lung cancers
> decline also. The effect of radon is either too small or inconsequential.
> But thousands of theoretical lives were saved.

And that's the problem.  The LNTH only predicts theoretical lives, not real lives.
That makes the problem doubly bad.  We can't measure the real lives; we certainly
can't measure theoretical lives.  How much more irrational can we, as scientists and
professionals, be?  Truly we come from fear, not rational thought.  In the case of
ionizing radiation, the fear is phobic.

> Let's look at the Oxford Study of Childhood Cancer. The case-control study
> found that about 15% of children who developed cancer under 15 y.o. were
> x-rayed in utero. About 10% to 11% of children who did not develop cancer
> were x-rayed in utero. The difference is 4% to 5%. The odds ratio is 1.40
> to 1.50. You won't see the difference value in any review paper. You'll
> only see the odds ratio, and that's because is sounds more impressive. Doll
> and Wakeford state that the excess absolute risk coeffient is about 6% per
> gray. Knox et al state that one cancer in ever 992 in utero x-rays produces
> one solid cancer and one leukemia. The problem is that the projected values
> from the case-control data base have not been tested. How do you test the
> theory? Prospective studies. Court-Brown did a prospective study on almost
> 40,000 prenatal x-rayed children. He found 9 leukemias and expected 10.
> According to Knox's projection, he should have found 40 to 50. [Note: BEIR
> VII is using Doll's study, but not Court-Brown's].

Can you provide documentation demonstrating the veracity of this parenthetical
statement?  If so, please provide it so I can request an explanation from the BEIR VII
committee.  Thanks.

> The same goes for
> essentially all prospective studies. Think of Chernobyl and the number of
> solid cancers and leukemias are predicted. The founder of the Oxford Study
> noted that she didn't understand why case-control studies show excess
> cancers and prospective studies don't.
> Bottom Line (finally): In industrial safety, you identify the problem,
> implement a method for personal safety, and check for its effectiveness. In
> radiation safety, suggest a problem, implement a method for personal
> safety, and stop there. Projected lives saved are assumed to be real. This,
> to me, is a serious flaw.

True, only too true.  We should all ask our congressional representatives to pass a
law that requires all government agencies to set up a method for measuring the
beneficial effect on health and safety of every regulation they pass, just as they are
required to assess the cost of each regulation (albeit never mind how wrong those
assessments are in the end) and many other things.  This beneficial measurement method
must also be global, not just in the area over which the agency has cognizance.  As
has been pointed out in other postings, IH fixes may make radiation work more
hazardous and vice versa.  Al Tschaeche antatnsu@pacbell.net
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