Brochure

PURPOSE: To document the scientific data; and to advocate for objective review of low-level radiation science policies. 

Responding to world-wide public concern: to apply costs/benefits to policies and programs; and to advocate for needed research.

BACKGROUND: Radiation protection policy derives from high-dose radiation health effects data (i.e., from Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb survivors, and from medical therapies). 

To apply these data to low-dose radiation protection where studies find no adverse health effects, policies administratively presume health effects to be linearly proportional to radiation dose down to zero dose. No lower limit is acknowledged below which radiation effects are negligible. This is the "linear no-threshold hypothesis" (LNTH). This hypothesis requires that contrary data be ignored.

Science:Deficiencies in the LNT are being identified.  

• Most low-dose laboratory and population studies are inadequate to show effects. However, many show bio-positive or adaptive responses. No valid studies confirm the LNTH.
• New molecular and cellular biology data demonstrate that cellular control of massive natural DNA damage rates contradicts the biological plausibility of the LNTH.
• Extrapolating effects orders of magnitude below the data violates scientific principles.

   Significant radiation research results are not published; and significant research is terminated and unfunded.  
  

Interest in Radiation, Science, and Health is welcome, from knowledgeable science and public policy individuals, and those seeking the evidence.

Interested organizations and individuals:

• Contribute data and information;
• Receive technical support;
• Support contracted and funded programs and projects;
• Join the effort to communicate the data and change LNT science policy.

 Individuals: Become a Member.

Contact: 

Radiation, Science, and Health, Inc.  Box 843, Needham, MA 02494 

or any Member of the Board

• Document and disseminate scientific data and analyses on low-level radiation health effects, including evidence of beneficial effects, and encourage needed research.
  
• Critique the literature, programs, policy analyses, and positions of
  standards-setting bodies. Recommend revised public policy analyses where indicated.
  
• Communicateon RSH activities through theRSH Newsletter;
  
• Disseminate scientific data and programs information through the RSH Bulletin
  
• Participate in public policy analysis and education in the public interest.

A CALL TO RE-EXAMINE THE SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE AND PUBLIC POLICY

Marvin Goldman, Ph.D., Dept of Surgical and Radiological Sciences, UC Davis, then President of the Health Physics Society, stated:  

   "It is time to scientifically challenge the old tenet that cancer risk is always proportional to dose, no matter how small...It is time to update our thinking and policies" Science, 271, (Mar 1996): 

Dr. Goldman stated also:  

"Are we really serious about investing about a trillion dollars to cleaning up our atomic backyard, when in all likelihood very little credible health risk may be involved...?" 

Philip Abelson, Ph.D., Editor Emeritus of "Science", in an editorial on "Risk Assessments of Low-Level Exposures" stated:  

  "The current mode of extrapolating high-dose to low-dose effects is erroneous for both chemicals and radiation. Safe levels of exposure exist. The public has been needlessly frightened and deceived, and hundreds of billions of dollars wasted. A hard-headed, rapid examination of phenomena occurring at low exposures should have a high priority." (Science 265, 1507, 9 Sep 1996)

The NRC Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste reported its recommendations on "Health Effects of Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation":  

  "Some studies in the U.S. as well as in China, Sweden, Poland, and Canada have arrived at conclusions that do not support the LNT model. Other research concludes that it is likely that at least a threshold or perhaps beneficial risk decrements (hormesis) exists at lower doses. We conclude that a reexamination of the regulatory model is appropriate." 

THE MISSION OF RADIATION, SCIENCE, AND HEALTH, INC. IS TO ENCOURAGE AND ASSIST IN SUCH A SCIENTIFIC REEXAMINATION.

•   "Populations have been studied in geographic areas of increased natural radiation, in radiation-exposed workers, in patients medically exposed, and in accidental exposures. No reproducible evidence exists of harmful effects from increases in background radiation three to ten times the usual levels. There is no increase in leukemia or other cancers among American military participants in nuclear testing, no increase in leukemia or thyroid cancer among medical patients receiving I-131 for diagnosis or treatment of hypothyroidism, and no increase in lung cancer among nonsmokers exposed to increased radon in the home.
    "The association of radiation with the atomic bomb and with excessive regulatory and health physics ALARA radiation levels practices has created a climate of fear about the dangers of radiation at any level. However, there is no evidence that radiation exposures at the levels equivalent to medical usage are harmful. 
    "The unjustified excessive concern with radiation at any level, however, precludes beneficial uses of radiation and radioactivity in medicine, science, and industry."

Lauriston Taylor, D.Sc., former Member ICRP, NCRP Chairman, and special assistant to the President, National Academy of Sciences, has called the use of the LNT model to calculate health effects of low-level radiation:  

"deeply immoral uses of our scientific heritage"

The French Academy of Sciences on ICRP recommendations stated in a report (1995):  

"After examination of recent scientific and epidemiological data, the Academy has confirmed the opinion it gave in 1989, that there is no scientific reason to justify lowering the standards in force today."

Professor W.V. Mayneord, former member of UNSCEAR and ICRP, wrote:  

"I have always felt that the argument that because at higher values of dose an observed effect is proportional to dose, at very low doses there is necessarily some effect of dose, however small, is nonsense." (Mayneord, Radiation and Health, p 140, 1964)

The Health Physics Society's 1996 Position Statement, by the "Scientific and Public Issues Committee" (the President, incoming President, and the three immediate Past Presidents), approved by the Board of Directors:  

"..recommends against quantitative estimation of health risk below an individual dose below 5 rem in one year or a lifetime dose of 10 rem in addition to background radiation."

 Myron Pollycove, MD, Prof Emeritus, Laboratory Medicine and Radiology, UCSF, Head of the Dept of Nuclear Medicine, SF Medical Center; Visiting Medical Fellow, USNRC, states in an editorial, titled "The Issue of the Decade: Hormesis" (Eur Jour Nuclear Medicine 22, 399-401, 1995), that:  

"this phenomenon can not be scientifically denied or ignored."

T. D. Luckey, Ph.D., Prof and Chairman Emeritus of the Dept of Biochemistry, U. Missouri- Columbia, wrote two books, "Hormesis with Ionizing Radiation" (1980) and "Radiation Hormesis" (1991), and many papers on the voluminous, scientifically valid, experimental and epidemiological data, and biological and radiophysical analysis and interpretation, demonstrating beneficial low level radiation health effects, with nearly 2000 references validating hormesis. 

Zbigniew Jaworowski, MD, Ph.D., Prof. Emeritus, Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw, an eminent researcher and UNSCEAR Member, writes on "beneficial radiation":  

"Radiation protection regulations usually invoke as their scientific basis the documents of UNSCEAR," but in an EPA Rulemaking Notice: "The most recent UNSCEAR document from 1994 however, on the adaptive effects of low doses of radiation is not taken into account in this Notice, in which a new radiation limit for the public is proposed. Implementation of such a low radiation standard, about 3% of the natural radiation background in many regions of the world, would bring enormous costs for society, and it would be ethically fair only through large reduction of identifiable health hazards. The UNSCEAR 1994 document does not provide scientific evidence that such a low radiation standard is desirable." (Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, 22, 1995)

These statements represent a small sample of statements by a great many qualified scientists

Prof. Gunnar Walinder, the eminent radiobiologist originally with Rolf Sievert at the Institute of Radiophysics in Stockholm, Chair of the Swedish Radiobiology Society, Member of UNSCEAR (1973-86) and US National Cancer Institute and European Late Effects Project Group task forces, in his book of this title, urges policies concerning low-level radiation be re-examined, stating: 

"not only do the current models of radiation carcinogenesis disagree with modern oncology but most important they have contributed to a number of misconceptions about radiation risks. What concerns me most is whether the radiological doctrines have sometimes caused greater health and environmental problems than those we seek to avoid."

Prof. Walinder has also stated: 

 "I do not hesitate to say that the LNT is the greatest scientific scandal of the 20th Century".