Scientific Jigsaw Puzzle: Fitting the Pieces of the Low-Level Radiation Debate

New submitter Lasrick writes "Skip past the dry abstract to Jan Beyea's main article for a thorough exploration of what's wrong with current 'safe' levels of low-level radiation exposure. The Bulletin is just releasing its 'Radiation Issue,' which is available for free for two weeks. It explores how the NRC may be changing recommended safe dosages, and how the studies for prolonged exposure have, until recently, been based on one-time exposures (Hiroshima, etc.). New epidemiological studies on prolonged exposure (medical exposures, worker exposures, etc.) are more accurate and tell a different tale. This is a long article, but reads well." Here's the free, downloadable PDF version, too.

Re:Short summary

[History's Coming To]

Precisely - "low-level" at Sellafield in the UK used to mean "lower than the background level", and people still got hysterical about it. We need to stop with the wooly-language descriptions and simply use the established units, or units-above-background where applicable. Is low level gamma worse than high level alpha? Is holding a piece of uranium for 5 minutes more or less dangerous than sleeping 10ft away from it for a week? People have no idea, including most of the media, we need to throw out the "levels" model and actually educate people so they can understand the risks properly.

Dry?

[vlm]

Skip past the dry abstract

Dry, but a funny read in some ways.

Model fits, both parametric and nonparametric, to the atomic-bomb data support a linear no-threshold model, below 0.1 Sv.

OK so the data implies there is no safe minimum dose based on models derived from numerology and graphs and experience.

On the basis of biologic arguments, the scientific establishment in the United States and many other countries accepts this dose-model down to zero-dose, but there is spirited dissent.

But that doesn't seem to make biochemical sense. (eventually you end up in the radiation equivalent of homeopathy)

a sizeable percentage of this population will receive cumulative doses from the medical profession in excess of 0.1 Sv, making talk of a threshold or other sublinear response below that dose moot for future releases from nuclear facilities or a dirty bomb.

"moot" in science-speak means it doesn't matter. Its not a 4chan reference.

The risks from both medical diagnostic doses and nuclear accident doses can be computed using the linear dose-response model, with uncertainties assigned below 0.1 Sv in a way that captures alternative scientific hypotheses.

A big F you to both the cranks and the real biochemical / biophysical scientists, because no civilized human can go thru life below 0.1 Sv, you can rock on with your homeopathy or astrology or whatever, none of us doctors cares much about your weird little long tail that no one can live in anyway.

Re:Short summary

[vlm]

Ionizing radiation causes cancer... There is no "safe dose"

You seem to have not read the abstract, the whole point of which is at ultra unrealistically low levels, practically homeopathic low levels, the mechanism, the cause/effect seems to not make much sense or is under debate, both real scientific debate and crackpot astroturfing debate. But the article points out that at any realistic dosage level there is not much debate by anybody. So the article pragmatically suggests to only apply real world numbers to real world exposures and ignore the whole topic of unattainably asymptotic low levels. The article argument is the opposite of yours in some ways.

An example of a realistic question at the ultra-low end is, looking at how naturally radioactive some of our high potassium food is, you'd think we'd evolve a way to pee the bad stuff away. Presumably people evolved in granitic-source / volcanic-source soil would be better at it than people evolved in sedimentary-source soil. Another realistic area of cancer research is proving the presence or absence of two-step or catalysts of cancer. Your body is pretty good at dealing with mutant cells, except when it fails and then you die of cancer, whoops. So figuring out why your body fails to kill cancer cells is in many ways more important than trying to figure out how to reduce the number of cells caused by radiation because even if you zero that, you're still going to have random biochemical accidents. Its an interesting theoretical area of research but the article points out for normal human beings its at a level that doesn't matter.

Re:Short summary

[greg_barton]

There is no "safe dose"

Citation, please.

Re:Anti-nuclear publication

[Tyler Durden]

Do note that the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" is a generally an anti-nuclear, scare-mongering publication

Utter nonsense. I remember perusing the print version of the Bulleting in my college library a few years ago, and it was anything but a knee-jerk, "scare-mongering" publication on nuclear issues. The articles were extremely informed and detailed.

There are two great articles that spring to mind. One was regarding a project run by the US government regarding how difficult it would be for countries without nuclear weapons to develop one. To test this, they found a physicist who had just gotten his PhD, making sure he that he wasn't someone with two much particular knowledge on nuclear physics. By using research from publicly-available sources he was able to eventually come up with a working design for a nuclear weapon. Just to be thorough he even designed a more complicated implosion design rather than a the simpler bullet design. The point of the article was that the difficult part for a country aspiring to create a nuclear arsenal is accumulating the proper uranium or plutonium. Creating the bomb is relatively simple.

The other article examined whether using depleted uranium for ammunition had lasting effects because of radioactivity. If I recall correctly, the radioactive aspect was not a concern. However, uranium can be poisonous without any consideration of its (limited) radioactivity. Since DU rounds piercing armor can cause the outer shell of them to vaporize, this could be a problem.

The Bulletin's conclusion was not obvious. Judging them just because of the Doomsday Clock is rash.

Re:Anti-nuclear publication

[Tyler Durden]

In other words, they rediscovered something that any professional or serious amateur in the field has known for decades.

Umm. The Bulletin is not, nor does not pretend to be, a scientific journal. Many serious amateurs or all professionals would not use it as a source for the latest information in nuclear science. And whether the conclusion of the article is known by the reader or not is completely irrelevant. The story behind it would definitely be of interest to a serious amateur or professional.

The conclusion regarding depleted uranium ammunition may be obvious to you, but I remember the mainstream media of the time had a lot of knee-jerk scare-stories regarding the harmful effects from "all that radiation". Since the Bulletin had a more informed and balanced article on the topic than other sources at the time, this means that the OP's assessment of it as "scare-mongering" in regards to all things nuclear (and your defense of him) is wrong.

But when you're not completely missing the point I'm sure you can come up with a post with more substance than insults.

Re:Low level radiation

[rgbatduke]

I think that you aren't giving the possibility of positive reaction mechanisms enough credit. Humans have co-evolved with alcohol for at least 6 to 10 thousand years. Over the overwhelming bulk of that time, if you did not drink alcohol your life was ugly, nasty, brutish, parasite ridden, and short. There is an interesting program on Netflix you might want to watch entitled "How Beer Saved the World" -- tongue in cheek but not really. It's really only been safe to drink the water for less than 100 years, in some levels of wealthy and scientifically advanced society, in countries where it is safe to drink the water, which isn't most countries even now, presuming you think drinking halogenated water is "safe". I grew up in India, and used to drink beer on the road when we travelled at age seven or eight, because it was one of precisely three safe options once you ran out of boiled water or iodine tablets. Tea (boiled water, no milk). Coca Cola -- because even if you dropped a cockroach into Coke as it was bottled, you'd just eat/drink down an acid-pickled cockroach and be perfectly fine. And beer. Golden Eagle beer, to be specific, is the earliest beer I can recall tasting. Back then they didn't have bottled water for sale.

For the most part the body metabolizes alcohol in moderation harmlessly. It isn't particularly directly toxic to the liver (although fermentation adjucts may be), it's just that the liver tends to get fat, just as it does (as you observe) if you eat enough carbs or the wrong sugars and have metabolic syndrome or type 2 diabetes. Alcohol acts as a mild blood thinner -- not unlike aspirin, but not as strong -- and hence may be directly beneficial at moderate levels for precisely the same reasons that aspirin is (and aspirin has its own toxicity and side effect issues, although they are rare in adults). As you note, it is a fairly harmless relaxant. The Mayo clinic lists it -- with warnings -- as being "possibly good for" reducing risk of heart disease, dying of a heart attack, risk of strokes (especially ischemic strokes), lowers your risk of gallstones (my grandmother was prescribed one beer a day, which she drank very religiously and dutifully being the wife of a Methodist Minister who did not hold with drinking, for this very reason, way back in the 1960s, as an alternative to taking a wad of horrendous-sized pills), and diabetes. Their guideline is one drink for women and two for men, but of course this depends on body size. Women are at greater risk then men (relative to any benefits) because of their higher risk of breast cancer, BTW.

As for statistical studies, they are how one proves that prayer and astrology do not work. You got that one backwards, thought I'd help you out. You're thinking of "anecdotal evidence", not double blind placebo controlled statistical studies. Even in physics (where I'm a physicist) correlation may not be causality but it is often all one has until one maybe eventually formulates a theory that might explain it, and that theory has as its ultimate foundation what? Evidence in the form of statistical correlation, of course. What else is there?

With that said, given the mass of Bayesian priors (a.k.a. "laws of nature" and the like) we have arrived at that are reasonably statistically sound, I totally agree that one should look for reaction mechanisms and explanations, but don't forget what they are explaining -- the statistically sound results obtained from the data. On a really good day, you come up with both the mechanism and the data and they are consistent and the mechanism predicts other things as well and then you get your Nobel prize and everything. Other days you are up against multifactorial effects and sparse data and trying to make sound inferences of cause is, well, "challenging" even though the statistical correspondence itself may be as sound as you like.

rgb

Re:Altitude [Re:Bad article, little information]

[HornWumpus]

They have the whole population as a sample. Cosmic radiation is typically about 10% of background. Deltas are fairly large. No problem finding the UV related cancers.

Also note: There are geographic areas with high Radon levels etc. None have been found to have higher then average cancer rates.

Yet they boldly assert they have proven there is no threshold. Show me the data!