RSH Data & Documents

"The Health Effects of Low-Level Radiation"
:Jim Muckerheide

Eben Byers, death by radium ingestion, 1932

Eben Byers, death by radium ingestion, 1932.
Radium-burden population exposures

FDA achieves regulatory authority over radiation

In 1928, at age 51, Eben Byers, a millionaire, socialite, sportsman, and industrialist (when that was a "good thing") started using Radithor, a radium elixir. He was so enamored of its invigorating qualities that he reportedly ingested 3-4 vials per day (containing 1 uCi Ra-226 and 1 uCi Ra-228, considered as 3.5 uCi Ra-226-equivalent).

He is estimated to have ingested 5,000 to 10,000 uCi by 1931.

In 1932, he died sensationally (a full page in Time magazine) from a massive radium overdose causing bone degeneration with the loss of his jaw and other disfiguring effects and complications.

FDA used this case to achieve the authority it had been seeking over radiation and radioactivity.

However, FDA then did not study the consequences to the many thousands of people who had been using radiation and radioactivity (400,000 to 500,000 vials of Radithor alone were estimated to have been sold), nor did it assess the benefits, or the long term risks.

Dr. Robley Evans at MIT collected more than 600 cases from the 1950s to 1969. He demonstrated conclusively that the radium cases, some with over 50 years follow up, showed a threshold of approximately 1,000 cGy (20,000 cSv) average dose to the skeleton.

In 1981, Dr. Evans confirmed this conclusion at an International Conference, that included then current data from the US Center for Human Radiobiology that had been established at Dr. Evans' retirement in 1970 with then more than 4000 cases, along with all the data from many other national programs world-wide.

And in 1994, Dr. Maletskos, working with Dr. Evans and others, confirmed the validity of this conclusion after another decade of follow-on, although the Federal government had succeeded in terminiating the analysis and follow on studies, and reporting of this evidence that is contrary to their objectives.

Additional independent analyses by Dr. Robert Thomas, and another by Dr. Otto Raabe, confirm the lack of health effects at less than 1,000 cGy (20,000 cSv?) to bone; and the lack of adverse health effects, and even significant positive effects in other health conditions to this highly-exposed population (except for small elevations in brest cancer, although this population of young women were also highly exposed to luminous radioactive materials on their work benches in extended working conditions.

And in 1994 a limited monograph on the radium-burden population program has been prepared by the former program director, Dr. Robert Rowland, again confirming the evidence of a lack of health effects in this population. This report is released in a limited format, printed in only 300 copies, and unannounced by DOE, to continue to ignore and suppress the data, in favor of misrepresenting ambiguous data by DOE and its standard-setting bodies to mislead policy makers and government funding authorities.

In the June 1995 sessions, the author notes that these results were ignored in setting ingestion standards: e.g., Mr. Byers, whose death led to creation of public fear and rejection of radiation use, ingested 5 to 10-million nCi; the radium-burden case cancer ingestion threshold is about 250-thousand nCi; but US drinking water standards are about 2 nCi/yr (at significant public cost for unjustified regulation).