Cancer Prevention by KCl Radiation in a Non-LNT world?

[howard long <hflong@pacbell.net>]

I like B. Cohen's analogy. Air pollution harm is much less than benefit from industries making it (c 30 years more life). Risk analyses must include benefit as well as harm. Thus, trapping Al Quida in Iraq keeps Zarkawi from using the missing 380 tons of nuclear trigger explosives here - or the 400,000 tons we destroyed in that "wrong war". 

 

Is Chronic Radiation An Effective Prophylaxis Against Cancer, Chen, Luan et al. JAPS 9;1 Mar 2004, suggests to me that deregulation of radiation might benefit society by reallocation of c $100B now used to remove beneficial amounts at Hanford and other places (< 0.4 Sv, as in the Taiwan apartments?). 

 

Deregulation might also facilitate individual choice of benefit, such as Cameron putting U ore under his mattress, and having placebo controlled study of longevity a in rest home. 

 

Even now, we can get around LNT based regulation. I just now counted 26 mR/hr one foot from 3,  40 lb sacks of KCL (water softener salt available from Lowes or Home Depot for <$20) in a room otherwise showing 13 mR/hr (half the gamma) on my Palmrad. This is about the difference between non-exposed nuclear shipyard workers and those exposed to 0.5 rem (who had less cancer and better longevity).

 

However, a non-LNT world will not come easily. My wife heard Luckey, Pollycove and other hormesis promoters at Doctors for Disaster Preparedness meetings - and still balks at my putting KCL under our bed!

 

Vote for the nuclear power advocate. He is also more scientific about adult stem cell avoidance of the rejection problems with embryos, about global warming (hopefully as much as 1100AD when Greenland was green and Venice was not flooded), and better SS and healthcare with ownership by individuals - HSAs (Galen.org, OISM.org).

  

Howard Long

 

  Bernard Cohen <blc+@PITT.EDU> wrote:

Franz Schönhofer wrote:



One serious question I have to those who want the LNT to be abandoned:What is their idea of radiation legislation? Would there be any limitsnow in force regarding maximum permissible doses, MPC's forradionuclides in food, air, waste etc. abandoned? Would doctors subjecttheir patients to 50 CT's per day? Would consumer products becomeradioactive? Would NPP's be allowed to discharge all their waste in theenvironment? Or would simply all those nice figures multiplied byhundred, thousand or one million?  

       ---You are essentially saying that LNT is necessary for regulatory purposes. My response to this is the following:





IS LINEAR-NO THRESHOLD THEORY JUSTIFIABLE FOR REGULATORY PURPOSES







            A former ICRP Chairman supports the linear-no threshold theory (LNT) because it simplifies bookkeeping. LNT is certainly convenient for making health physics calculations. It allows us to calculate the risk from any given radiation exposure in quantitative terms, which is the goal of any risk analysis. Without LNT, the risk to a person from a given dose depends on the concentration of radon in his home, his experiences with medical X-rays, etc; effectively, there is a synergism between a given exposure and all other radiation exposures. Since most of the latter are unregulated, it is impractical to take them into account. If we abandon LNT, we largely abandon quantitative risk assessment, which might seem to make regulation more difficult.



            But is this really a very serious problem?  It is a problem that occurs in nearly every other area of environmental concern. For example, LNT is not used for air pollution. There are regulations on releases and on ambient levels of SO2, of NOx, of total suspended particulates, of fine particulates, of ozone, of lead, etc. For none of these can the risk of each additional exposure be calculated quantitatively., even if no other pollutants are present.  No consideration is given to synergisms between these various pollutants, although such synergisms are quite likely to be important.  By the standards we apply to radiation, the scientific bases for air pollution regulations are mediocre at best.



            But they work quite successfully. They prevent catastrophes and generally avoid identifiable deaths. Most importantly, they give the public confidence that it is being protected. This confidence is not even shaken by studies concluding that tens of thousands of Americans die annually from air pollution1. The Media give scant attention to these studies, and the public shows little interest as long as no victims are identifiably tied to the pollution..



            Is this situation reprehensible? I think not. It allows our technology to progress and to increase Society’s wealth, and technology and wealth create health, far outstripping the harm to health done by the pollution. Air pollution reduces our life expectancy by something like 30 days2, whereas technology and the wealth it has created have increased our life expectancy by 30 years in this century.



            We thought we could do much better with radiation, using LNT to calculate risks in quantitative terms. For every little bit of radiation, we calculate the number of deaths, and killing is something the Media are quick to report. People are moved by such reports and view these deaths as real, perhaps even afflicting themselves or their loved ones. The public has thus  been driven insane over fear of radiation, losing all contact with reality. As a result, we have largely lost the benefits of nuclear power which could be averting tens of thousands of deaths per year from air pollution (and also solving other environmental problems like global warming, acid rain, etc). We are losing many other benefits of radiation such as food irradiation which could be averting millions of cases of food poisoning, saving thousands of lives, each year. We are wasting our Society’s wealth on ridiculous clean-up programs at nuclear facilities; this wasted wealth could save thousands 

!

 of!

 lives

 each year if it were spent on biomedical research, on public health programs, or on highway safety.



            Our passion for doing much better for radiation than has been done for air pollution by using LNT has backfired horribly, costing our Society dearly. Perhaps it could be argued that we must be honest and scientific at all costs. But is accepting LNT honest science? I have reviewed this question in detail in a recent paper3 and concluded that it is not. The Health Physics Society Position Paper of January 1996 concludes that the science does not exist for supporting LNT in the low dose region. The situation is the same as for low levels of air pollution -- the science just isn’t there. The best they can do is regulate by assuming a threshold for harm, and that is the best we can do for regulating radiation. Far from making regulation of radiation more complicated as is often assumed, this would greatly simplify our regulatory process



            Thus, there is no honest scientific reason why radiation should be treated differently than air pollution in the low dose region  We should abandon this phony effort to be more scientific in our regulatory practices. That way we would be more honest, and we would have a much more positive impact on the Society we serve.



 



REFERENCES



1. H. Ozkaynak and J.C. Spengler, Analysis of health effects resulting from population exposure to acid precipitation,   Environmental Health Perspectives 63:45ff; 1985



 



2. B.L. Cohen, Catalog of risks extended and updated, Health Physics 61:317-335; 1991



 



3. B.L. Cohen, Validity of the linear-no threshold theory of radiation carcinogenesis in the low dose region, Technology 6:43-61; 1999