RE: Does Size Matter?

["Carlisle, Sara" <carlisles@aecl.ca>]

I'm not sure that obese people have more cells than skinny people - just
bigger cells (at least, that is probably true for the fat cells).


Sara M. Carlisle
Radiation Biology and Health Physics Branch
AECL, Chalk River Laboratories
Chalk River, ON K0J 1J0
Canada

phone (613) 584-8811 extn 3667
fax        (613) 584-1713
email   carlisles@aecl.ca


> ----------
> From: 	mephillips12@magnox.co.uk[SMTP:mephillips12@magnox.co.uk]
> Reply To: 	radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu
> Sent: 	Wednesday, October 28, 1998 4:28 AM
> To: 	Multiple recipients of list
> Subject: 	Does Size Matter?
> 
> 
>      For years there has been a question which has bugged me, to which I
>      have never received a satisfactory answer.
> 
>      The dose response curves that we use rely to a large extent on data
>      from the Japanese atomic bomb survivors. Absorbed dose is expressed
> in
>      Gy, ie J / kg. Japanese people, (Sumo wrestlers excluded), are (and I
>      apologise for any racial stereotypes :-) generally small compared to,
>      say, a North American raised on a diet of MacBurgers.
> 
>      For equal whole body doses, do large people have a greater morbidity
>      than small people (to quote another thread running at this moment, if
>      big people have more cells the LNT hypothesis would suggest that they
>      are more prone to radiation induced cancers)?
> 
>      Does it imply that the dose response derived from bomb survivors
> would
>      underpredict the response to a more obese population?
> 
>      Regards,
> 
>      Martin
> 
>      Martin Phillips
>      Plant & Environmental Radiological Measurements Team
>      BNFL Magnox Generation Division
> 
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