Re: radiation is radiation? lochbaum

[Bob Flood <bflood@SLAC.Stanford.EDU>]

I'm going to save a small amount of bandwidth and reply to two posts.

Item 1 - From the remarks of Mr Shadis:
>energy delivered = damage.

That's an oversimplification but not necessarily true. When radiation (any
type, from any source, manmade or natural) interacts with a living cell,
there are four possible net effects:

1) nothing
2) the cell is altered but repairs itself or is repaired by an outside
process
3) the cell is altered and dies
4) the cell is altered and survives in a changed configuration

Possibilities 1 through 3 lead to no harm to the host organism. The 4th
possibility MAY lead to a problem IF the alteration is propagated during the
cell's reproduction AND IF the alteration is harmful to the host. That's
rather a bit different from a singular claim that it always causes damage.

Item 2:
>--------- I'd also suggest that answering my questions in language as
>non-scientific but still accurate as possible will also help you
communicate 'your side' to the public
>-------

Let me use (re-use actually) the data readily available and not subject to
debate or that does not exist just as someone's opinion. If radiation,
whether manmade or naturally occurring, is causing cancer to the extent
those in charge of the TF Project claim, then it must follow that areas
where the naturally occurring background is double the national average MUST
have a higher incidence of cancer, does it not? There may be modifying
effects that result in the cancer rate in the higher background area not
being double the national average, but it certainly should be higher. Yet
the cancer rate in Colorado (average background about 750 mrem/y) is about
double the national average (about 350 mrem/y), and the cancer rate in
Coloradoi is lower than the national average. These are all verifiable and
not a matter of opinion.

Taking is further, what would you expect in the way of cancer rates in a
place where the background is nearly 30 times higher? In the Kerala area of
India, the common annual dose is around 10,000 mrem per year, and the cancer
rate there is not distinguishable from other agricultural areas.

These are facts. I recommend you ask the TF Project staff how these
conditions can exist if their claims about "deadly radiation" are true. Bear
in mind that the conditions DO exist, so the justification of the claims
about radiation injury must, in some way, fit with the facts.

And by the way, another term for microbiological modeling of radiation
interactions would be "speculation." The concept of synergy may have merit,
but any theories about how radiation and some other process or substance
join to create effects neither would cause alone should have some data
somewhere to support the idea. If the cancer rates in places where the
synergistic effect is expected cannot be shown to be higher than places
where the effect is not found, then the advocate of the theory is offering a
religeon and not science. After all, do you think the American public would
be willing to abandon several forms of electrical generation and a great
many modern medical practices based on some need to eliminate "deadly
radiation," and undergo the upheaval associated with such fundamental
changes, because someone somewhere can speculate about a theoretical injury
process at the cellular level when there is no observable evidence of harm
to humans? THAT would be a pretty incredible demand to expect a nation to
willingly accept.
============================
Bob Flood
Dosimetry Group Leader
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
bflood@slac.stanford.edu


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