Re: "Limit to Survival - Effect of Radiation

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

In a message dated 10/4/02 7:44:28 AM Mountain Daylight Time, jacobusj@ors.od.nih.gov writes:



> I guess you missed the point.  Since regulations starting in the 1950s have
>
> reduced the amount of radiation workers and the public can receive, the life
>
> expectancy has gone up.  Check it out.  


The greatest public exposure is from radon and natural sources, and I find it hard to believe that such exposure TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC IN THE U.S. has changed significantly in either direction since the 1950s.  In fact, if anything, atmospheric testing in the 1950s and 60s INCREASED radiation exposure.


Could you please post a reference that specifically relates decreased exposure to all ionizing radiation, for a particular population, to life span, extension of years of life, morbidity statistics, or any other specific health measure?  Moreover, the reference should clearly account for the many other changes in nutrition and medical care that have extended the lifespan in the last 50 years.  Also, how could any change in POPULATION exposure to ionizing radiation affect the perinatal, neonatal, and infant death rate?


Around 1960-61, obstetricians stopped routinely x-raying the fetus at term (to detect breech presentation).  Was there any change in perinatal or neonatal mortality or morbidity or incidence of birth defects, as a result of this change in practice?   Similarly, in the mid-1970s, the practice of requiring food service workers to have annual chest x-rays for tuberculosis stopped.  Did this have any effect, positive or negative, on mortality or morbidity?  Then we have the old shoe-fitting x-ray machine question: was lifespan extended or shortened, or was there more or less childhood cancer, after children's feet stopped being x-rayed (and we stopped having the machines to play on)?


I am not making a case for or against any of these uses of x-ray, and I myself  believe that they were a prudent exercise of an ALARA sort of practice (e.g., when the risk from annual chest x-ray appears to exceed the risk of tuberculosis, one doesn't require the x-ray any more).  I just wonder if there is not enough data available for any of these or similar situations to draw some conclusions about either harm from exposure or hormesis.  


Ruth

Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.

ruthweiner@aol.com