Re: RADSAFE digest 3135

["Zack Clayton" <zack.clayton@epa.state.oh.us>]

Norm, 

I have no argument with your first paragraph wishing for a lurker from the Tooth Fairy to speak up.  

I have several objections to your second paragraph of that post.
>   To say that there are no health problems associated with nuke plants is not
>accurate. 
    I hope that is not the message we have been putting out, cause sure as hell someday someone will find something real.  Relatively speaking though, it is a clean industry compared to almost anything else, clean in terms of permitted effluents of chemical and radiological nature.  Clean in terms of trash generated, clean in terms of noise, clean in terms of nuisance dust, and clean in terms of allowed radiation.   This last because radiation is regulated at these plants.  Very few other industries have any regulation of radiation from the process and this does not mean those  industries are radiologically clean, just that nobody has made enough noise to overcome entrenched bureaucratic fear of the business constituent.

>There are higher levels of breast cancer nearer a plant than farther
>away.   
    Where are the unbiased case studies with controls using all the collected data instead of just the subset that shows the elevated cases?  I still haven't seen them cited.

>There are indications of higher infant mortality,e tc near nuke plants.
      See above.

>There are cancer clusters.  
       Of course there are cancer clusters.  It would be very weird if there weren't any.  Cancer clusters happen.   Its part of the nature of the distribution pattern of that disease. The problem is that the clusters near power plants are blamed on radiation or emissions and there is no connection made for a causative pathway.  But an actor(ess) says is the cause and people go along with the misinformation like sheep after a shepherd.  I always find it strange that the clusters in an area with a nuke plant and other industry are blamed on the nuke plant while in other areas those clusters are blamed on the other industry.  When there is no local industry, some other "cause" is sought by the people affected.  Sometimes cancer happens.  Sometimes it happens in families, sometimes it happens in neighborhoods.  Sometimes it because you like smoked meats or lie in the sun all day, and sometimes it's because the only house you could afford was between AC Delco, the Fisher Body stamping plant, the GM Engine Foundry, and next door to a backyard scrap dealer in Flint, MI. 

>I think the idea that there is a synergistic effect 
>between continually doses of low lowel radiation and the rise of soft tissue
>cancers is an idea that needs to be considered.
      Okay, think about what you have said here.  If there is synergistic effect, then the soft tissue cancer is preexisting to interact with the radiation.  The radiation (by definition here) could not have caused the cancer.  

     I would entertain the possibility of a synergistic effect of continually low doses of radiation HIGHER THAN GLOBAL BACKGROUND VARIATIONS having a synergistic effect with low doses of chemical agents in an irritation/initiator  type of action for cancer induction (for example cigarettes, a combined delivery system).  But I'm sorry, nuclear power plants don't provide this amount of radiation even at the fence line.

These are my own thoughts and not an official statement for any  organization.

Zack Clayton
Ohio EPA - DERR
email:  zack.clayton@epa.state.oh.us
voice:  614-644-3066
fax:        614-460-8249

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