Radiation and the value of human (James Conca, Jerry Cuttler) USofA Canada

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Radiation And The Value Of A Human Life James Conca July 23, 2018 The 63rd Annual Meeting of the Health Physics Society wrapped up last week in the great city of Cleveland and there was a palpable air of excitement that things might change.

HPS represents the group of scientists most responsible for protecting us from the harms of radiation. They know we have ridiculously-low rad limits that can cause more harm than good, and also unnecessarily cost us hundreds of billions of dollars that could be used to save actual lives.

The venue for this meeting was fitting since Ohio is experiencing some of the national insanity of prematurely closing nuclear plants for no good reason other than unjustified fear of radiation and the intransigence of lawmakers and anti-nuclear groups to value the best low-carbon, safest energy source we have to fight global warming. Even in light of all climate change experts’ call for more nuclear, from Jim Hansen on down.

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The assumption of LNT: any radiation dose no matter how small will cause harm.

However, small doses of radiation, < 10 rem(cSv)/yr, appear to be easily handled by cellular repair mechanisms that evolved as a normal adaptive response with the emergence of the eukaryotic cell 2.3 billion years ago. It would be odd indeed if the upper end of Earth background radiation was not near the threshold for significant radiation-induced biological effects. Conca.

This fear originated around 1959, when the world adopted a singularly foolish hypothesis for the negative biological effects of radiation, called the Linear NoThreshold hypothesis, or LNT and its resultant policy, ALARA (As Low As Reasonably Achievable).

LNT assumes, in contrast to almost all data on living organisms, that any radiation is bad and there is no threshold of radioactivity below which there is no risk, even Earth background radiation levels. Following ALARA means that we should protect everyone from all radiation, making doses as low as we possibly can, even if it costs billions.

Indeed, we do spend billions of dollars each year protecting against what was once background levels. It’s right out of a Road Warrior movie. No wonder the fear of radiation took over the worldview. Science fiction is much more fun to study than real science.

The Plenary Session at the HPS meeting was devoted to just these issues. Yours truly started off with a discussion of what these extra unnecessary costs might be. About $500 billion is a good estimate for America, over a trillion dollars for the world.

Dr. Roger Coates, President of the International Radiation Protection Association in London, followed with a discussion of ‘Prudence and the Hidden Burden of Conservatism’, outlining the strong support for developing a more practical and pragmatic approach to radiation protection.

While prudence is a noble concept that we use in our everyday lives to keep us from harm, the combined impact of accumulated layers of conservatism in deriving radiation limits has resulted in limits that are hundreds of times below the radiation doses that we should worry about, and at a great cost. Always choosing the worst-case scenario isn’t conservative, it’s just wrong. That’s why we developed statistics in the first place.

Dr. Antone Brooks gave the Landauer Lecture, title ‘Ya, But What If?’ that probed the fear that permeates society with ridiculous radiation scenarios like: ‘Ya, but what if the fallout from bomb testing in the 1950s and 60s created a cancer epidemic in Utah?’ No, Utah has the lowest cancer rate in the Nation and Washington 2

County, where the fallout was the highest, has the second lowest cancer rate in the state. And is where Dr. Brooks grew up.

Or, ‘Ya, but what if radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer?’ No, radon alone is not very effective in producing lung cancer. Radon combined with cigarette smoke increases lung cancer, but it’s the smoking that dominates that risk. If you have radon in your home just stop smoking and put a fan in the basement.

DOE could save billions, and clean-up more sites, if society adopted a more reasonable limit for radiation, still well below background levels, but where no harm has ever been observed.After DOE Most of the fears and questions surrounding radiation have been answered very well over the years and all studies point to the need to have a reasonable threshold for radiation below which we don’t have to worry about health effects. And we don't have to spend billions protecting against a phantom menace.

Unless you, the reader, are in a boat out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, you’re getting a radiation dose between 200 and 1,000 mrem/year (2 to 10 mSv/yr) in the United States, just from background sources such as rock, dirt, potato chips and cosmic 3

rays (EPA Rad Limits) and the radioactive isotopes of uranium, thorium, radon and potassium that are in them.

(Yes, potato chips are the most radioactive food, but if you eat ten bags a day, it’s the salt and fat that will kill you, not the radiation!)

Some places in the world have background doses ten times higher than us, but there have never been any observable health effects from these doses. Ever. Anywhere.

On the other hand, regulations require nuclear waste disposal systems and clean-up standards to meet release criteria of less than 4 mrem/yr (0.04 mSv/yr) to downgradient drinking water supplies. Moving from Cleveland to western Colorado will give you an extra 100 mrem/yr (1 mSv/yr). Should we make moving to Colorado against the law? Yes, according to these regulations. No, according to common sense.

There are different types of radiation and different biological effects of each and it doesn’t matter whether the radiation is natural or man-made, they’re the same. The measure of dose (rem or Sv) takes all that into account. However, we have made our regulations act as if they are different which is totally unscientific.

It is not possible to see statistical evidence of public health risks at exposures less than 10,000 mrem/yr (100 mSv/yr) because any risk is well below the noise level of all other risks faced by humans or the environment. That’s why we will never see any deaths, or even excess cancers, from Fukushima radiation, but 1,600 people died in the days following the accident from the frantic forced evacuations that resulted mainly from fear.

It is useful to note that the debate surrounding LNT in the 1950s was all wrapped up in the Cold War and was used by China and the USSR to stop above-ground nuclear bomb tests by America, so I guess that was a good thing. LNT sounded like a nice conservative idea at the time, but little did we know the collateral damage that would follow, such as fear of radiological medical diagnostics and treatments that save millions of lives each year.

The underlying problem with LNT is that life originated on Earth in a much higher radiation background than exists today, long before we split the atom. When the eukaryotic cell emerged over 2 billion years ago (the type of cell that makes up all higher life forms including humans), background radiation was between 1,000 and 20,000 mrem/year (10 and 200 mSv/yr).

In order to survive and thrive, these cells developed very efficient mechanisms for repairing radiation damage at or below these levels. These same mechanisms were essential to life when oxygen first entered the atmosphere about the same time. Free oxygen is thousands of times more deadly than radiation and we have only recently understood the importance of anti-oxidants in molecular biology and in our food for overall health.

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Radiation is one of the weakest mutagenic and cytogenic agents on Earth. That’s why it takes so much radiation to hurt anyone.

Health physicists get a little frustrated that, on the one hand, they know that there is no real risk from any radiation below background, but are required to keep to limits a hundred times lower. The public often asks, ‘if it’s so safe, why are you working so hard to keep it so low?’

Good question. And the answer is ‘Because we’re told to. It’s the rules.’

So what are the costs of regulating radiation doses to such absurdly low levels?

A better question might be - How much do we consider the value of a human life to be?

It depends on how you view it, and who is paying (1, 2, 3, 4): $7 million is the value of a human life according to EPA. $316,000 is the average paid out in health care over a life in America. $129,000 is the average historic legal value of a human life in America. $12,420 is the death benefit to families of deceased soldiers, although circumstances in combat can increase that. $45 million is the value of a single healthy human body when chopped up and sold on the black market for body parts. $2.5 billion is the amount we spend to save a single theoretical human life based on LNT, although it is doubtful we have saved any lives at these levels. $100 is the cost to save a human life by immunizing against measles, diphtheria, and pertussis in subsaharan Africa.

So, we could save 25 million lives in Africa for the cost of saving one theoretical life from low-levels of radioactivity. This is nuts. And it creates an ethical dilemma we have not yet faced up to.

The presence or absence of a threshold dose for radiation is a societal decision that society has been left out of. That needs to change. We have real problems that need to be solved. Yes, we need to deal with radiation doses above, say, 5 rem, 10 rem, whatever level you want to draw as the threshold. But there’s always a threshold. No different than, mercury, cadmium, or lead. Everything is in the environment at some level, but the old adage that dose makes the poison is quite true.

Life on Earth has dealt with this issue for billions of years, it certainly will for the next billion or two. One part per billion of lead is no big deal. One part per million…now 5

that’s a problem. It’s why we have a 15 part per billion threshold for Pb in drinking water.

Life has easily dealt with radiation levels up to 10 rem/year for over 3 billion years. It’s not a problem. 100 rem/year…now that’s a problem. We need a threshold, or we spin ourselves into nonsense.

Like we always do.

Note: another scientific meeting on LNT is scheduled for this coming September 30 to October 3 in the Tri-Cities, Washington.

Dr. James Conca is an expert on energy, nuclear and dirty bombs, a planetary geologist, and a professional speaker. Follow him on Twitter @jimconca and see his book at Amazon.com

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============================================================ Comment by Jerry Cuttler, D.Sc. Nuclear Science and Engineering, July 23, 2018. Dr. Cuttler has studied the biological effects / benefits of low dose radiation for over 20 years.

Very nice article by Jim Conca; however, he shows the dose threshold to be way too low at 10 cSv/year for zero risk. This dose limit should be 50 cSv/year, minimum.

My analysis of dog studies shows beneficial health effects below 70 cSv/year.

The radiation level in the City of Ramsar ranges up to about 26 cSv/year with no observable risk.

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Comment by John Dale Dunn, MD, JD Above we have a fine essay on matters related to Linear No Threshold radiation biophysics risk management and why it is nonsensical, expending great sums chasing a phantom menace of ambient and low level radiation. The essay is by James Conca, Geo Chemist, Cal Tech PhD. His essay on the question of excessive fear about nuke power and radiation is compelling and well done. Good evidence and arguments presented for the Health Physics meeting last year in Cleveland. In October this year I get to take another swing at discrediting Linear No Threshold tox and risk management at the American Nuke Society/Health Physics joint meeting in Pasco WA. Matt Malkan is a physicist ally and friend on the UCLA faculty whom I greatly respect for his defense of James Enstrom, also a UCLA faculty man, who was persecuted by the enviro nuts at UCLA. Malkin came to his defense and I am grateful for his efforts. Matt sent me this because I am going to present at the American Nuke Society/Health Physics Society meet in Pasco Washington in the fall—my theme is LNT is bad science and makes for bad policy making and risk management in matters of radiation biophysics.

Although I thought that Conca’s essay above was outstanding, it has a couple of sour notes—Dr. Conca, not being a toxicologist, does a great job on toxicology in matters of radiation biophysics, but he makes some bad assertions sprinkled in the essay about other areas of tox—areas where the precautionary principle and Linear No Threshold templates have distorted other areas of tox and risk management.

Specifically he doesn’t understand the tox and epidemiology junk science that have influenced, to use his choices in the essay, nutrition/diet claims and claims about ambient lead levels.

Bad tox and epidemiology have created scares about ambient mercury lead and other metals, the same bad tox and epidemiology that he condemns in relation to radiation in the ambient environment.

For example he says salt and fat in potato chips is lethal and he justifies the excessive lead standards that are based on the same bad risk management he condemns as radiation LNT based risk management.

The phenomenon is called, Gell-Mann amnesia—condemning the claims of a source when you are well informed and expert in an area and then accepting the claims in areas where you have no expertise.

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Salt and fat are not lethal. They don’t kill. Nutrition scares are the game of charlatans in so many areas. The scandal of lead toxicology research is well known to those who deal with general toxicological scaremongering. Dr. Conca knows his radiation biophysics and LNT in the area of ambient low level radiation, but these other areas and the tox and epidemiology used to create scares in those areas is just as much a scandal.

Murray Gell-Man’s observation can apply to US EPA information—when their claims are bunk if you know the area it would be wise to avoid accepting their claims in other areas. US EPA is the home of the big lie, the noble lie—the lie that furthers a political agenda.

Below is Micheal Crichton’s discussion of the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia in Wikipedia. ============================================================ The Gell-Mann amnesia effect is a theoretical psychological phenomenon, the term itself being coined by author, film producer and academic Michael Crichton after discussions with Nobel-Prize winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann. Originally described in Crichton's "Why Speculate?"[1] speech, the Gell-Mann amnesia effect labels a commonly observed problem in modern media,[2] where one will believe everything they read from a journalist even after they come across an article about something they know well that is completely incorrect.[3] The conclusions found and perspectives portrayed by the author are entirely erroneous, often times flipping the cause and the effect.[4][5] Crichton notes these as "wet streets cause rain" stories.[6] In short, most eloquently put

by Thomas L. McDonald, the Gell-Mann amnesia effect defines the idea that "I believe everything the media tells me except for anything for which I have direct personal knowledge, which they always get wrong."[7] Recorded cases of this phenomenon are rare. One example is that of C. S. Lewis (who did not know of this phenomenon but nevertheless has a case of it). After reading biographical interpretations of his own works and realizing how incorrect they could be, he began to read other biographical interpretations with more caution, aware not to accept everything stated at face value.[8] Michael Crichton concluded in the same essay that there is absolutely no value in the media, as society continues to seek information from the same source that was entirely wrong on the topic in which one retains expertise.[9] He then says that ″the only explanation for our behavior is amnesia".[1][7] Christopher Hitchens once referenced this phenomenon in a town hall speech with the example of the Washington Post, saying that, although things are often biased and incorrect, he and a large portion of the audience continue to get their news in that way.[10]

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References[edit] 1. ^ Jump up to: a b Crichton, Michael (April 26, 2002). Why Speculate? (Speech).

International Leadership Forum. La Jolla, California. Retrieved April 10, 2018., 2. Jump up ^ Carey, Benedict (2017-10-20). "How Fiction Becomes Fact on Social Media". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-04-10.

3. Jump up ^ "'I'm Not an Expert, But I Play One on TV.' | National Review".

National Review. 2017-04-25. Retrieved 2018-04-10.

4. Jump up ^ James, Desborough (2017). Inside Gamergate : a social history of the gamer revolt. [S.l.]: [Lulu.com]. pp. 106â&#x20AC;&#x201C;107. ISBN 9780244627720.

OCLC 1011256859.

5. Jump up ^ Kimball, Roger. Saving the republic : the fate of freedom in the age of the administrative state. Mollie Ziegler Hemingway. New York. pp. The End of Our Collective Amnesia. ISBN 9781594039669. OCLC 1008762474.

6. Jump up ^ "Wet Streets Cause Rain". November 17, 2015. Retrieved April 10, 2018.

7. ^ Jump up to: a b McDonald, Thomas L. (March 12, 2014). "The Gell-Mann Effect". Retrieved April 10, 2018.

8. Jump up ^ Cranach (2011-08-23). "The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect".

Cranach. Retrieved 2018-04-10.

9. Jump up ^ "Media Credibility and the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect | Joe Carter". First Things. Retrieved 2018-04-10.

10. Jump up ^ Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens. "On The Washington Post".

John Dale Dunn MD JD Lecturer Civilian Faculty Emergency Medicine Carl R Darnall Army Medical Center Fort Hood, Texas 401 Rocky Hill Road Brownwood, Texas home 325 784 6697 cell 325 642 5073 =====================================================================

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