{"id":63547,"date":"2015-09-14T12:00:34","date_gmt":"2015-09-14T11:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=63547"},"modified":"2015-09-11T14:09:50","modified_gmt":"2015-09-11T13:09:50","slug":"radiation-is-good-for-you-and-other-tall-tales-of-the-nuclear-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/09\/radiation-is-good-for-you-and-other-tall-tales-of-the-nuclear-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cRadiation Is Good for You!\u201d And Other Tall Tales of the Nuclear Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

8 Sep 2015 – <\/em>The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering a move to eliminate the \u201cLinear No-Threshold\u201d (LNT) basis of radiation protection that the U.S. has used for decades and replace it with the \u201cradiation hormesis\u201d theory\u2014which holds that low doses of radioactivity are good for people.<\/p>\n

\"radiationexp-510x380<\/a><\/p>\n

The change is being pushed by \u201ca group of pro-nuclear fanatics\u2014there is really no other way to describe them,\u201d charges the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) based near Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf implemented, the hormesis model would result in needless death and misery,\u201d says Michael Mariotte, NIRS president. The current U.S. requirement that nuclear plant operators reduce exposures to the public to \u201cas low as reasonably achievable\u201d would be \u201ctossed out the window. Emergency planning zones would be significantly reduced or abolished entirely. Instead of being forced to spend money to limit radiation releases, nuclear utilities could pocket greater profits. In addition, adoption of the radiation model by the NRC would throw the entire government\u2019s radiation protection rules into disarray, since other agencies, like the EPA, also rely on the LNT model.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf anything,\u201d says Mariotte, \u201cthe NRC radiation standards need to be strengthened.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NRC has a set a deadline of November 19 for people to comment on the proposed change. The public can send comments to the U.S. government\u2019s \u201cregulations\u201d website.<\/a><\/p>\n

Comments can also be sent by regular mail to: Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, Attention:Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff. Docket ID. Needed to be noted on any letter is the code NRC-2015-0057.<\/p>\n

If the NRC agrees to the switch, \u201cThis would be the most significant and alarming change to U.S. federal policy on nuclear radiation,\u201d reports the online publication Nuclear-News<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>\u201cThe Nuclear Regulatory Commission may decide that exposure to ionizing radiation is beneficial\u2014from nuclear bombs, nuclear power plants, depleted uranium, x-rays and Fukushima,\u201d notes Nuclear-News. <\/em>\u201dNo protective measures or public safety warnings would be considered necessary. Clean-up measures could be sharply reduced\u2026In a sense, this would legalize what the government is already doing\u2014failing to protect the public and promoting nuclear radiation.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the wake of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. crash program during World War II to build atomic bombs and the spin-offs of that program\u2014led by nuclear power plants, there was a belief, for a time, that there was a certain \u201cthreshold\u201d below which radioactivity wasn\u2019t dangerous.<\/p>\n

But as the years went by it became clear there was no threshold\u2014that any amount of radiation could injure and kill, that there was no \u201csafe\u201d dose.<\/p>\n

Low levels of radioactivity didn\u2019t cause people to immediately sicken or die. But, it was found, after a \u201clatency\u201d or \u201cincubation\u201d period of several years, the exposure could then result in illness and death.<\/p>\n

Thus, starting in the 1950s, the \u201cLinear No-Threshold\u201d standard was adopted by the governments of the U.S. and other countries and international agencies.<\/p>\n

It holds that radioactivity causes health damage\u2014in particular cancer\u2014directly proportional to dose, and that there is no \u201cthreshold.\u201d Moreover, because the effects of radiation are cumulative, the sum of several small exposures are considered to have the same effect as one larger exposure, something called \u201cresponse linearity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The LNT standard has presented a major problem for those involved in developing nuclear technology notably at the national nuclear laboratories established for the Manhattan Project\u2014Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and Argonne national laboratories\u2014and those later set up as the Manhattan Project was turned into the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.<\/p>\n

On one hand, Dr. Alvin Weinberg, director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, declared in New Scientist <\/em>magazine in 1972: \u201cIf a cure for cancer is found the problem of radiation standards disappear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, other nuclear proponents began pushing a theory they named \u201cradiation hormesis\u201d that claimed that the LNT standard was incorrect and that a little amount of radioactivity was good for people.<\/p>\n

A leader in the U.S. advocating hormesis has been Dr. T. D. Luckey. A biochemistry professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia and visiting scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, he authored the book Hormesis and Ionizing Radiation and Radiation Hormesis <\/em>and numerous articles. In one, \u201cRadiation Hormesis Overiew,\u201d he contends: \u201cWe need more, not less, exposure to ionizing radiation. The evidence that ionizing radiation is an essential agent has been reviewed\u2026There is proven benefit.\u201d He contends that radioactivity \u201cactivates the immune system.\u201d Dr. Luckey further holds: \u201cThe trillions of dollars estimated for worldwide nuclear waste management can be reduced to billions to provide safe, low-dose irradiation to improve our health. The direction is obvious; the first step remains to be taken.\u201d And he wrote<\/a>: \u201cEvidence of health benefits and longer average life-span following low-dose irradiation should replace fear.\u201d<\/p>\n

A 2011 story in the St. Louis Post Dispatch<\/a> <\/em>quoted Dr. Luckey as saying \u201cif we get more radiation, we\u2019d live a more healthful life\u201d and also noted that he kept on a shelf in his bedroom a rock \u201cthe size of a small bowling ball, dotted with flecks of uranium, spilling invisible rays\u201d It reported that \u201crecently\u201d Dr. Luckey \u201cnoticed a small red splotch on his lower back. It looked like a mild sunburn, the first sign of too much radiation. So he pushed the rock back on the shelf, a few inches farther away, just to be safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), set up by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in 1947 to develop civilian uses of nuclear technology and conduct research in atomic science, a highly active proponent of hormesis has been Dr. Ludwig E. Feinendegen. Holding posts as a professor in his native Germany and a BNL scientist, he authored numerous papers advocating hormesis. In a 2005 article published in the British Journal of Radiology<\/a><\/em> he wrote of \u201cbeneficial low level radiation effects\u201d and asserted that the \u201cLNT hypothesis for cancer risk is scientifically unfounded and appears to be invalid in favor of a threshold or hormesis.\u201d<\/p>\n

The three petitions to the NRC asking it scuttle the LNT standard and replace it with the hormesis theory were submitted by Dr. Mohan Doss on behalf of the organization Scientists for Accurate Radiation Information; Dr. Carol Marcus of the UCLA medical school; and Mark Miller, a health physicist at Sandia National Laboratories.<\/p>\n

The Nuclear Information and Resource Service points out that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or EPA is fully supportive of LNT.<\/p>\n

The agency\u2019s reason for accepting LNT\u2014and history of the standard\u2014were spelled out in 2009 by Dr. Jerome Puskin, chief of its Radiation Protection Division.<\/p>\n

The EPA, Dr. Puskin states, \u201cis responsible for protecting the public from environmental exposures to radiation. To meet this objective the agency sets regulatory limits on radionuclide concentrations in air, water, and soil.\u201d The agency bases its \u201cprotective exposure limits\u201d on \u201cscientific advisory bodies, including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the International Commission on Radiological Protection, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Ionizing Radiation, and the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, with additional input from its own independent review.\u201d The LNT standard, he writes, \u201chas been repeatedly endorsed\u201d by all of these bodies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is difficult to imagine any relaxation in this approach unless there is convincing evidence that LNT greatly overestimates risk at the low doses of interest,\u201d Dr. Puskin goes on, and \u201cno such change can be expected\u201d in view of the determination of the National Academies of Sciences\u2019 BEIR VII committee. (BEIR is for Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation.)<\/p>\n

BEIR VII<\/a> found that \u201cthe balance of evidence from epidemiologic, animal and mechanistic studies tend to favor a simple proportionate relationship at low doses between radiation dose and cancer risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

As chair of the BEIR VII committee, Dr. Richard Monson<\/a>, associate dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, said in 2005 on issuance of its report: \u201cThe scientific research base shows that there is no threshold of exposure below which low levels of ionizing radiation can be demonstrated to be harmless or beneficial.\u201d<\/p>\n

A European expert on radioactivity, Dr. Ian Fairlie, who as an official in the British government worked on radiation risks and has been a consultant on radiation matters to the European Parliament and other government entities, has presented detailed comments to the NRC on the petitions that it drop LNT and adopt the hormesis theory.<\/p>\n

Dr. Fairlie<\/a> says \u201cthe scientific evidence for the LNT is plentiful, powerful and persuasive.\u201d He summarizes many studies done in Europe and the United States including BEIR VII. As to the petitions to the NRC, \u201cmy conclusion is that they do not merit serious consideration.\u201d They \u201cappear to be based on preconceptions or even ideology, rather than the scientific evidence which points in the opposite direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

An additional issue in the situation involves how fetuses and children \u201care the most vulnerable\u201d to radiation and women \u201cmore vulnerable than men,\u201d states an online petition opposing the change. It was put together by the organization Beyond Nuclear, also based near Washington, D.C. It is headed \u201cProtect children from radiation exposure<\/a>\u201d and advises: \u201cTell NRC: A little radiation is BAD for you. It can give you cancer and other diseases.\u201d It continues: \u201cNRC should NOT adopt a \u2018little radiation is good for you\u2019 model. Instead, they should fully protect the most vulnerable which they are failing to do now.\u201d<\/p>\n

How might the commissioners of the NRC decide the issue? Like the Atomic Energy Commission which it grew out of, the NRC is an unabashed booster of nuclear technology and long devoted to drastically downplaying the dangers of radioactivity. A strong public stand\u2014many negative comments\u2014over their deciding that radioactivity is \u201cgood\u201d for you could impact on their positions.<\/p>\n

__________________________<\/p>\n

Karl Grossman<\/em>, professor of journalism at the State University of New York\/College of New York, is the author of the book,\u00a0<\/em>The Wrong Stuff: The Space\u2019s Program\u2019s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet<\/a>.\u00a0Grossman is an associate of the media watch group <\/em>Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).\u00a0He is a contributor to\u00a0<\/em>Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 counterpunch.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

8 Sep 2015 – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering a move to eliminate the \u201cLinear No-Threshold\u201d basis of radiation protection that the U.S. has used for decades and replace it with the \u201cradiation hormesis\u201d theory\u2014which holds that low doses of radioactivity are good for people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[147],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}