SEPP News
February 2000

Myron Pollycove, M.D., one of the panelists and special assistant to the deputy executive director of operations of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, charged that data supporting the LNT have been substantially misrepresented and that billions of dollars are wasted in the unnecessary cleanup of sites to background levels.

In explaining the logic that contradicts the LNT, Pollycove said the human body endogenously creates 200 million times more "free radicals" (disease-causing mutations) per day than does a normal daily dose of background radiation. Each day, one billion free radicals are produced in each cell of the human body, but only 1 in 1000 gets to the DNA to cause damage. These mutations are the same as caused by free radicals generated by radiation. The free radicals in the DNA are normally removed and damage repaired by the body's immune system, which generates antioxidants that fight the free radicals. And so, while it is accepted that a healthy human body naturally fights off billions of mutations endogenously created per day (in addition to the daily dose of background radiation) without any deleterious effect, the LNT theorizes that even a fraction of the daily dose of background radiation can be harmful.

On the contrary, Pollycove said, when background radiation is increased tenfold, as was established in UNSCEAR '94 (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation), low-dose radiation has proved to stimulate antioxidant production. When antioxidants are increased, "we wind up with fewer mutations per day, which adds up to less aging per day, longer life, fewer degenerative diseases that are associated with these mutations, and less cancer." This process has led in the last three years to the coining of the term "radiation hormesis," which means that low-level radiation "stimulates the organism, stimulates antioxidants that prevent damage to DNA, stimulates enzymatics that repair damage, and stimulates the immune system."

Not only are data being suppressed, but evidence in support of the LNT has been "inappropriately juggled," panelist Ted Rockwell said. As an example, he talked of graphs in support of the hypothesis that show a curve in which data points come down into the beneficial area for certain low doses and then go back up into the harmful area as dose is increased. "What they've done in a couple cases is to take the data, such as the nuclear shipyard workers study, because most of your data are in the low levels-and since they don't like to see the points drop below the line [into the beneficial area], they take all the data from zero to 50 rad [cGy] and call it a single point and squeeze it above the curve [into the harmful area]," he said. Rockwell called this misrepresentation of data "not proper, and when it changes the answer from yes to no, it's no longer a trivial matter."

Supporting Rockwell's stance is Senator Domenici, who has expressed belief that data are being improperly examined. According to Rockwell, Domenici has prompted an investigation of the LNT in the form of a 10-year DOE research program. In addition, Domenici requested that the U.S. General Accounting Office study the LNT and evaluate whether it is the proper application of public policy. The GAO is expected to release its report by June 2000.

Besides saving billions of dollars on unnecessary cleanup of sites, retiring the LNT could also result in enhancing the appeal of nuclear energy, panelist Jim Muckerheide said. "At a basic pressurized water reactor plant, 30 percent of the investment in the plant is to generate power and 70 percent is to provide safety...there are many things that can be done to bring nuclear [power] to a more cost-effective level." Nuclear medicine could also benefit, he said. "The costs in nuclear medicine have been driven largely by the regulatory burdens and problems with producing and handling isotopes and controlling nuclear material,"

"Radiation Hormesis: The Scientific Foundation" will be funded by the NRC and published in year 2000, according to Pollycove. The report will evaluate about 500 papers on the subject of the LNT. In his research, he said, he has not been able to find one statistically significant study that does not demonstrate radiation hormesis in the low-dose range-that is, 120 rad. In fact, he said, "every single one that is statistically significant shows a clear beneficial effect, not `no harm,' but a clear beneficial effect." The Radiation Hormesis report will be available on the World Wide Web, which will make it "hard for the kind of chicanery that's been going on" to continue.

A second work is being compiled by the International Center for Low Dose Research at the University of Ottawa, Canada. Pollycove closed the session by mentioning a Canadian fluoroscopy study of 32,000 women in tuberculosis sanitariums that was conducted between 1930 and 1952. By sheer coincidence, each woman received a number of fluoroscopic exams, and each one was 2/10 rad, which is about the average dose in the mammogram given today. Results showed that the women who received 15 rad over two to three years had 34 percent less death from breast cancer than the women who were considered the controls, who received anywhere from 1 to 9 rad. The results of the study were published many years later in The New England Journal of Medicine and it was peer reviewed by radiation experts. But the authors had published the data in tabular form and never plotted it out. The authors, "knew that if they plotted it, anybody could look at it and see [that low doses had beneficial effects]." One of the authors re-released the paper in 1996, under the pretense of updating it, Pollycove said. In the preamble, according to Pollycove, the author stated that no low-dose data existed, so that it was necessary to use high doses and extrapolate down. What the author did was to eliminate the 10-20, 21-30, and 30-50 rad categories and put them all in one category, 0-50, and then went up from there. The author, Pollycove added, is a member of the BEIR VII committee, and the paper is one that the committee is going to use to examine the LNT. The only way the paper could show linearity, Pollycove concluded, was if some of the data had been "juggled."