FW: Jueneman on Radiation induced Hormesis

["Ted Rockwell" <tedrock@CPCUG.ORG>]

I got this on another listserve.  I don't know how many of you saw it when

it came out in 1995.  The Editor of R&D magazine apparently attended Jim

Muckerheide's ANS session on health effects of low dose radiation and got

something out of it.  (Which is more than some of our friends nearer home

did  :-)



And he states it very clearly.



Ted Rockwell



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Subject: Jueneman on Radiation induced Hormesis





Folks:



Find below a commentary from Frederic Jueneman of Research & Development

(R&D) Magazine on the topic of ionizing radiation induced Hormesis.  Never

assume anything...



Have YOU had your Minimum Daily Requirement (MDR) of radiation today??



Paul March

Lockheed Martin Space Operations  (LMSO)

2400 NASA Road 1, MS: C18

Houston, TX  77058-3799

Ph: 281-333-6854  FAX: 281-333-7620

e-mail: paul.march@LMCO.COM



INNOVATIVE NOTEBOOK

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT 1995

Frederic B. Jueneman, FAIC

R&D Magazine

Copyright 1995 by Frederic B. Jueneman



Late this past October I took one of my grand kids to the Open House at The

Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory complex, a Department of Energy facility

nestled high in the hills overlooking the UC Berkeley campus and devoted to

problem solving in energy, environment, health, and basic research. Included

in this array is a Genome Research Lab, one of three such labs supported by

the DOE to explore the human DNA genome through robotics and digital

microscopy.  The exposition attracted students from all walks of life.



In Bldg. 2 is the historically aging Betatron, last powered up in 1993, a

relic of the Nobel laden experiments of yesteryear. But dwarfed by this

massive cyclotron was a minuscule Lexan window exhibit of a neon filled

multistage spark chamber, where cosmic rays from "somewhere out there"

zapped through every few seconds, silently ionizing the high voltage charged

neon gas with segmented orange-colored streaks, first at one angle then at

another.



The school lesson here, as a student attraction, is that such energetic

cosmic particles have been soaking the Earth for untold eons, noiselessly

bathing us in an ionizing shower that has possibly defined the radiation

threshold of our quality of life since the beginning of biological time.



By happenstance, shortly after this fascinating excursion in Berkeley I

attended the American Nuclear Society gathering across the Bay in San

Francisco where a series of international interest meetings were devoted to

low level radiation and its concomitant effects on our present quality of

life. The average person living in the US, for example, gets about 360

milli-rems radiation per year from both cosmic and terrestrial sources.  The

cosmic sources are from galactic and extragalactic particles while

terrestrial origins are principally from diffusion of radon gas. Estimates

range as high as 15,000 particles per second per person.



Some curiosities were brought out at this ANS meeting that defied

explanation. Bernard L. Cohen, professor of physics at the University of

Pittsburgh, had made an independent comprehensive survey of some 1600

counties throughout the US, a study that purportedly was designed to

once-and-for-all define if not sustain the theory of linear, no-threshold

distribution on cancer-induced radiation as espoused by the Nuclear

Regulatory Commission. However, this was not what he found at all.



The standard chart on such things begins with a zero-level radiation

threshold and rises linearly toward some arbitrarily high mortality dosage.

But, up until some several hundred milli-rems there was no discernible

effect. What was shown was a slight but statistically significant decrease

in radiation-induced carcinomas at around several hundred millirems.

Furthermore, the statistical curve then dipped downward giving a negative

slope, and only returned to rise above the baseline at about 5 rems per

year, some fifty times the annual recommended limit by the NRC. Then begins

an extensive gray area where precious little is known up to about 100 rems

per year.



This finding was supported by researchers from Japan, who in the course of

their own investigations had also used the statistics supplied by the US for

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where a study of nearly 80,000 survivors were

divided into control and exposed groups. The normalized distribution of

carcinomas showed about 120 more incidences in the unexposed group, which

ran counter to every expectation. The question is, what's going on?



The statistics for Denver and the Colorado plateau are also skewed. These

folks get an additional 90 millirems per year from both cosmic and

terrestrial sources, but have less than average incidences of cancer. This

same skewness exists for people who live in higher radon-level areas,

seemingly contrary to what we read in the mass media.  Moreover, those

persons having plutonium-powered cardiac pacemakers can add 100 milli-rems

to their annual dosage.



What this seems to boil down to is what is called hormesis, a biological

term that describes the effect of a stimulating insult by a toxic substance

at nontoxic levels.  Many such chemical toxins are known, such as arsenic,

copper, or selenium, which play minor but significant hermetic roles in

metabolism at relatively low concentrations.



Does this mean that radiation also is a necessary "nutrient" in the

metabolic broth, that there's a minimum daily requirement?



I would wager that it does. For one thing, Homosapiens has proliferated and

thrived for mega years in this milieu. For another, mankind has extended its

individual life span substantially over the last few centuries, due to

better living conditions, increased nutrition, and more effective medical

and sanitary practices. Humankind now encounters otherwise rare physical

insults and diseases because we live long enough to experience them.

In like manner, radiation exposure at elevated levels of up to 100 rems (per

year) is probably only significant in the aging process, and we haven't yet

really learned how to control that.



R&D © 1995 by Frederic B. Jueneman











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