Re: Dose vs Regs cont'd

[John Goldsmith <gjohn@bgumail.bgu.ac.il>]

Al, there are two weaknesses in your otherwise attractive argument.
The first is the self-serving statement that" we know much more about the 
effects of radiation than we know about nearly any similar agent."
That may be your position about your knowledge, but I recall a long
history of such statements both before and after the realization that 
radon may be making a major contribution to background radiation 
exposures of populations.  What are similar agents?  I have heard 
substance experts make the same claim for lead both before and after it 
was realized that low level exposures of pre-schoolers can impair their 
intellectual development. (Possibly the most costly environmental 
expossure of the century)  I am currently involved in trying to better
understand possible health risks from RF (microwave) exposures, a form of 
radiation we seem to know too little about.  So lets keep hubris out of 
the discussion, and admit that what we know may, and usually has been 
ultimately recognized to be, incomplete.  The second point is your use of 
health  effect.  The customary consideration in much of the thread is that 
cancer increases are the beginning and end of radiation health effects.  
This is biologically naieve, and operationally a big handicap.  There are other 
effects on the hematological system, on immunology, on biological oxidants, 
on reproduction, of many forms of radiation.  If protection systems were 
able to use more of these  early and-- possibly you will say "soft", because
of their non-specificity,-- endpoints, then the monitoring of populations 
with low level exposures and use of such observations to evaluate 
whether protection had been adequate would be more ethically acceptable.
                Gjohn@bgumed.bgu.ac.il  

                  John R. Goldsmith, M.D., M.P.H.., Professor of Epidemiology
                  Ben Gurion University of the Negev, POB 653 Beer Sheva
                  ISRAEL