RSH Data & Documents

1994 ANS Winter Meeting

"The Health Effects of Low Level Radiation: Science, Data, and Corrective Action"

Biology and Medicine
Division,
Environmental
Sciences Division,
Isotopes and Radiation Division

Winter Meeting Sessions, Washington DC,
November 16, 1994

Low-Level Radiation
Health Effects: Critical Reviews of the "Linear, No-Threshold" Dose-Response Model

By Jim Muckerheide,
Session Organizer

The Session is entitled "Low-Level Radiation Health Effects: Current Data." It presents substantial radiation health effects data that are currently (and historically) available, that refute the LNT.

Nobel laureate (Physiology or Medicine, 1977) Dr. Rosalyn Yalow, Emeritus Distinguished Professor-at-Large, Mt Sinai Hospital School of Medicine, provides multiple examples of representative studies that demonstrate the lack of adverse radiation health effects, from populations exposed to high natural background, radiation workers, medical patients, and others. She discusses "the unjustified excessive concern" about radiation, and the excessive costs and lost public benefits of the linear, no-threshold model. She states that doses at the levels of diagnostic medicine have no adverse effects.

Dr. Constantine Maletskos, Consulting Scientist and associate of Dr. Robley Evans at MIT, presents new work that confirms the high thresholds of the 1910's-30's radium-burdened populations. Subjects with <1000 rads ( to bone) have no adverse effects, and those with 1000- 80,000 rads have ~28% incidence, which are ignored to assume linear, no-threshold dose-response. Dr. Evans showed BEIR and Gofman's linear no-threshold assumptions scientifically invalid in 1974. Federal support constrained, then terminated, these studies, even though many of the exposed subjects remain alive today.

Dr. Sohei Kondo, Kinki U. (Japan) Atomic Energy Research Institute, and Emeritus Professor, U. Osaka (Japan), presents Japanese survivor data showing no genetic effects, with thresholds, and "troughs" of (non-significant) beneficial effects, for non-cancer deaths <200 rem and cancers <50 rem; and discusses biological mechanisms of radiation-induced suppression of tumors.

Dr. John Cameron, Emeritus Professor of Medical Physics, U. Wisconsin Medical School and Member of the Technical Assessment Panel for the DOE-sponsored $10M Nuclear Shipyard Worker Study presents these results. The study was completed in 1987, released by DOE in 1991, but never published, and ignored It shows 28,500 nuclear workers >0.5 rem (of 700,000 workers) with statistically significant (24%) fewer deaths than 33,000 non-nuclear workers.

Dr. John Neuberger, U. Kansas Medical Center, School of Medicine, critically reviews case control studies of residential radon and lung cancer, critiquing the statistical significance of results, and summarizing ongoing studies.

Myron Pollycove, MD, Emeritus Professor, U. California San Francisco former Director of Nuclear Medicine, San Francisco Hospital, and Special Medical Fellow at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, shows two definitive examples of significant decreased cancer mortality correlated with low to moderate radiation, and finds that assuming the linear no-threshold dose-response fails to consider empirical dose-response data, and normal biological defense and repair mechanisms.
       He presents Dr. Bernard Cohen's strong correlation of high radon concentrations (272,000 home radon measurements by US county) with lower lung cancer (considering smoking, confounding factors, and any unknown confounding factor to affect the result is more significant than smoking, but unobserved!)
       He also presents the breast cancer mortality data of Canadian women exposed to radiation fluoroscopy that finds significantly less than normal breast cancer below 30 rem, increasing above 30 rem. The study ignores these data, arbitrarily and erroneously presumes linear response, concludes that there would be 60 excess deaths/million women exposed to 1 rem, that would predict 900 excess deaths/million women at 15 rem.
        The actual data, with >99% confidence, predicts 10,000 fewer deaths/million women!

Dr. Roger Berry, Westlakes Research Institute (UK),  presents the highly- exposed Sellafield workers: 542 males at 50-200 rem, and overlapping 470 workers from the 1957 Windscale pile fire and cleanup, showing cellular evidence of radiation exposure, but no difference in morbidity and mortality from the adjusted UK average.

The afternoon Session is chaired by Dr. John Cameron, Emeritus Professor, U. Wisc Medical School.

It is entitled, "Low-Level Radiation Health Effects: Programs and Panel."  It presents radiation research programs, followed by a Panel to discuss the implications for radiation health effects research, and radiation protection policies.

Dr. Richard Wilson, Mallinkrodt Professor of Physics at Harvard U., discusses what we can learn from the Russian nuclear accidents that massively exposed workers and populations, equivalent to the Japanese atomic bomb population doses. He reports on some studies, indicating lower dose responses vs. Japanese data, consistent with evidence of less adverse effects from lower dose rates.

Leonard Sagan, MD, recently retired Director of Medical Programs at EPRI, presents current research confirming "U-shaped" dose-response and biological mechanisms, including work by the "Biological Effects of Low Level Exposures" (BELLE) Group. BELLE participants include Federal agencies (e.g., EPA and DOE), private sector, and academic scientists.  It studies both linear and adaptive responses, for toxic chemicals and radiation, demonstrating adaptive repair and protective effects of sub-lethal exposures. The results argue to reconsider unjustified practices that adhere to the assumed linear no-threshold dose-response.

Victor Bond, MD, Senior Medical Research Scientist, BNL, demonstrates that the assumed-linear dose-response model fails to apply total imparted energy and biological effects at equivalent biological levels, (radiation "dose" is energy/unit mass, not total energy to a cell, organ, or organism). Applying total energy is consistent with general applications that relate effects to total imparted energy, with a threshold (mpirically and mathematically). The linear model is therefore scientifically invalid; and resultant large costs and adverse societal effects are unjustified.

The Panel, with the above participants, included opening remarks by Dr. Sadao Hattori, Vice President of Research of the Central Research Institute of the Electric Power Industry of Japan, who reports on dose-response data from a number of on-going specific research studies that are confirming the lack of a linear dose-response, and beneficial effects, of exposure to low-dose, vs. high dose, ionizing radiation.

It also includes opening remarks by Jack Ransohoff, President of Neutron Products, Inc, on the arbitrary regulatory standards, or lack thereof, and extraordinary costs engendered by the policy of "linear to zero" radiation damage and ALARA in the hands of arbitrary regulators.

The program was also co-sponsored by the Education and Training, and the Radiation Shielding and Protection Divisions