Re: Washington Post article

[Judd Sills <sillsj@GAT.COM>]

At 05:36 PM 4/16/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Could someone who hasn't thrown the Washington Post article in their email
trash
>please re-post it?  I threw it out, then needed it again.
>
>If you're having a bad day and need to flog someone, I'll take some abuse
over 
>this request.
>
>Scott Hudson
>Health Physics Office
>Madigan Army MedCen
>
>
Atomic Split: Data Recharge Debate on Low-Level Radiation Risk

By Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writer 
Monday, April 14 1997; 
Page A03 The Washington Post

The statistics seem clear and compelling, and completely at odds
 with common sense: In Japan, site of the world's only nuclear 
attacks, radiation victims are outliving their peers.

It's one of the stranger twists in 50 years of scientific monitoring 
of atom bomb survivors. As expected, the people closest to ground zero 
have died in high numbers of cancers that began in a white-hot flash of 
nuclear radiation. But as one moves farther from the blast site, the death 
rate plunges until it actually dips below the baseline.

And so, oddly, people with limited radiation exposure appear to live longer 
than neighbors who had none at all.

The discrepancy has several possible explanations, but none of them have
quelled 
the growing debate over what the data seem to suggest: Could low-level
radiation 
-- regulated in this country and elsewhere as a powerful carcinogen -- be
less dangerous than commonly believed?

The question, which has divided scientists and academicians for years, has 
flared again because of a number of provocative new studies that seem to 
refute prevailing views about low-level radiation -- the relatively low-
grade sort found in some kinds of medical waste or in the natural radon 
gas found in many homes.

"It's like a religious dispute," said Steven Galson, the Energy Department's 
chief medical officer. "It's very, very intense."

The issue has broad implications, not just for nuclear workers but 
for ordinary consumers and taxpayers. If the government relaxed radiation 
exposure standards, by even a small degree, it could result in enormous 
savings for utilities, hospitals and other businesses that use radioactive 
materials. Taxpayers could save billions of dollars if cleanup standards 
were eased for the dozens of lightly contaminated sites around the country.

There's no sign that such a change is imminent. Some long-term epidemi-
ological studies continue to suggest risks from even the most minute 
quantities of radiation. But others are challenging the conventional 
wisdom in ways that are becoming harder to ignore. Here are a few of 
the recent findings:

Tens of thousands of Navy shipyard workers were exposed to radiation 
in the 1960s and 1970s. Yet, in carefully controlled epidemiological 
studies by Johns Hopkins University, the radiated workers appear to 
have suffered no ill effects. In fact, they have fewer cancers than 
non-exposed workers.

Thousands of soldiers took part in nuclear weapons tests in the early 
years of the Cold War. But in a pair of recent analyses, researchers f
ound no sign of unusual illnesses or higher death rates among these 
"atomic veterans."

A University of Pittsburgh researcher tracked cancer rates in American 
counties with the highest levels of radon, the naturally radioactive gas. 
His finding: Lung cancers are lower in the areas where exposure is the 
highest.

Each case has been met with criticism over possible flaws that may have 
skewed the results. One problem is that epidemiological studies, which 
track human illness and deaths over time, can be relatively crude 
instruments for measuring health effects. "It's like hitting an ant 
with a hammer," said the Energy Department's Galson.

To help resolve the dispute, a committee of the National Academy of 
Sciences gathered in Washington recently to launch a months-long project 
to decide whether the latest evidence on low-level radiation and health 
should be formally reviewed. A similar review is underway at the National 
Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, the congressionally 
chartered board that helps advise the government on radiation safety.

It's too early to predict the outcome, but already prominent scientific 
groups are taking sides. Last year, the Health Physics Society, a 
professional association of scientists who study the health effects 
of radiation, surprised many observers when it effectively rejected 
the government's existing guidelines as too conservative.

Others take a more cautious view. Some, like the Environmental Protection 
Agency's Jerry Puskin, have observed that many of the most vocal advocates 
for change have their own reasons for wanting to see nuclear-based 
technologies succeed. "If you already have an agenda, you tend to grab on 
to these things," Puskin said.

At the core of the debate is a simple but powerful theorem, born amid the 
uncertainty and anxiety of the atomic era. It states that all radiation is 
harmful -- and the more radiation, the greater the harm. Known among
scientists 
as the "linear no-threshold" model, it holds that there is no truly "safe" 
level of exposure because even a single radioactive particle could cause 
damage to cells that could lead to cancer.

This model guided U.S. regulators in setting exposure limits for radiation in 
the 1950s, and it continues to do so today. The government's exposure limit
for 
most Americans is 0.1 rems a year, a level lower than the average person's
exposure 
from natural radiation sources (The average American receives 300 millirems
of 
radiation from natural sources each year.)

Radiation is simply energy in movement and can take the form of high-speed 
particles or electromagnetic waves. The weaker, or "nonionizing," forms of 
radiation include visible light and radio and television waves. Considerably 
more powerful is "ionizing" radiation, so named because it packs enough
energy 
to strip electrons from atoms.

At high levels, ionizing radiation can do serious damage to the genetic
material 
within cells. Damage can also occur at small doses, but it is
"indistinguishable, 
at the cellular level, from the damage routinely experienced from
metabolism," 
argues Theodore Rockwell, of Radiation, Science and Health Inc., a
pro-nuclear group.

In the March edition of the journal The Scientist, Rockwell notes that living 
cells have adapted over billions of years to natural radiation that is
present 
in virtually every rock, and which bombards Earth daily from space. He
dismisses 
as "silly" government standards that attempt to control radiation at levels 
smaller than a typical tourist encounters by walking through naturally
radioactive 
granite halls in the U.S. Capitol.

"Even sleeping with another person or moving to a hill or up 10 floors of a
building 
increases one's radiation dose beyond the permissible minimum," he wrote.

At the very least, Rockwell and others who share his views hope the debate
will 
result in a better public understanding about radiation. In the United
States, 
in contrast to other Western countries, fear of radiation has led to public 
rejection of nuclear power as an energy source. It also fuels public
suspicion 
about such potentially beneficial technologies as food irradiation, which can 
kill deadly pathogens and reduce the waste of food through spoilage, they say.

"In the United States we have taken the position that radiation is so
dangerous 
we don't want anything to do with it," said David P. Hickman of the federal 
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. "There's a real question of whether 
we may be hurting our future."

MEASURING RADIATION'S EFFECTS

People are exposed to radiation in many ways, and about five-sixths of the 
exposure comes from natural sources.

Activity Millirems

Typical yearly exposure, all sources 360.00

Yearly exposure from natural sources 300.00

Full set of dental X-rays 40.00

Chest X-ray 8.00

Flying round-trip from D.C. to Los Angeles 5.00

Watching TV for one hour 0.15

Living outside nuclear power plant for a year 0.10

Compared with other health risks, radiation poses little risk for most 
Americans, reducing life expectancy about 18 days.

Health risk Expected life lost

Smoking a pack of cigarettes a day 6 years

Being 15 percent overweight 2 years

Moderate alcohol consumption 1 year

Working in agriculture 320 days

Working in construction 227 days

Working in nuclear plant (1,000 mrem/yr) 51 days

Typical annual radiation dose (360 mrem/yr) 18 days

SOURCE: Department of En
Judd M. Sills, CHP           |   Office: (619)455-2049
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