Re: LNT Advocating article

["Otto G. Raabe" <ograabe@UCDAVIS.EDU>]

At 07:55 PM 4/25/01 -0000, Jim Nelson wrote:

>

>Occup Med 2001 Apr;16(2):331-344

>

>Health Effects in Underground Uranium Miners.

>

>Hornung RW.

>

>The health effects associated with uranium miners have received much 

>attention in the last 30 years.....The relative risk of 

>lung cancer is linearly related to cumulative exposure to radon decay 

>products....An inverse exposure-rate effect exists, such that prolonged 

>exposure at low levels of radon is more hazardous than shorter exposures to 

>higher levels...etc. 

******************************************************************

April 25, 2001

Davis, CA



This standard analysis fails to consider the three-dimensional nature of

the dose response relationship. All of the observations (and their correct

interpretations) are explained in my paper about the inverse dose-rate

effect for alpha emitter-induced cancer from radium: Raabe, O.G., S.A. Book

and N.J. Parks, "Bone cancer from radium: Canine dose response explains

data for mice and humans;" Science 208: 61-64 (1980). This same phenomena

was further explained for lung cancer from plutonium and other

radionuclides in several publications including Raabe, O.G., "Extrapolation

and scaling of animal data to humans: Scaling of fatal cancer risks from

laboratory animals to man;" Health Physics 57 (suppl.1): 419-432 (1989).



Although the alpha exposure of lung tissue is much more effective (up to a

factor of 10) for inducing lung cancer at lower dose rates than at higher

dose rates (inverse dose rate effect), the time required to develop cancer

(cancer induction time) gets longer and longer as dose rate goes down, so

that at very low dose rates the time required for radiation induced cancer

to develop exceeds that natural life span and there is a life-span

effective threshold in the dose-response curve. Hence, the incidence of

radiation induced cancer drops quickly to negligible levels at low dose

rates. The typical analysis promoting the LNT model completely obscures

this threshold. The classic example of this confusion can be found on page

198 of BEIR IV where Evans and Rowland show the distinct and well-known

non-linear threshold for radium-induced bone cancer and Mays and Lloyd show

how to obscure it with a straight LNT line.



For further information read my Chapter 30 in: Raabe, O.G.(ed., INTERNAL

RADIATION DOSIMETRY, HPS 1994 Summer School, Medical Physics Publishing,

Madison, Wisconsin (1994).



Otto





**********************************************

Prof. Otto G. Raabe, Ph.D., CHP

Institute of Toxicology & Environmental Health

(Street Address: Bldg. 3792, Old Davis Road) 

University of California, Davis, CA 95616

E-Mail: ograabe@ucdavis.edu

Phone: (530) 752-7754   FAX: (530) 758-6140

***********************************************

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