Underexposed: What If Radiation Is Actually GOOD for You?

Prologue

Radiation can be dangerous.

So can ignorance.

THE YOUNG WOMAN had injured her wrist in a fall, and the swelling would not go down. She made an appointment with her family physician to have an X-ray to determine if any bones had been broken. Several X-rays were taken to obtain different views. In a few minutes, they were developed, and the wrist was found to have a slight crack that required the use of a splint for several weeks.

In a few days, the young woman, already a mother, began to feel those subtle, suspicious changes in her body. She went again to the doctor to find she tested pregnant. But the memory of her X-ray haunted her. She knew that all radiation was harmful, and that it could cause her to have a retarded (or worse) baby. The next evening, she spoke with a nurse in her Women’s Club who shared the same nuclear nightmare. The nurse suggested that she consider an abortion. A consultation with her gynecologist found him in agreement. The therapeutic abortion eliminated the possibility of a deformed baby.

This story was related to me by the woman, who by chance was reading the first draft of this book. I took her information to a health physicist I had met and asked him to estimate the amount of radiation the fetus would have received from the 1960s or 1970s X-ray machine—and what its likely effect would have been. In a few minutes he told me that the fetus would have received less than half the radiation received from a coast-to-coast airline flight, and that the effect would have been entirely negligible.

Radiation can be dangerous. So can ignorance.

I wonder what my niece or nephew would have been like. So does my sister.

Chapter 1

Maybe What We Know Ain’t So?

The trouble with people is not that they don’t know,

but that they know so much that ain’t so.

—Josh Billings 1818–85

IF YOU’VE BEEN living on planet Earth anytime during the past fifty years, you are well aware of the dangers of radiation. We have learned that whenever we are exposed to X-rays, for example, there are certain precautions that must be taken. For dental X-rays, we’ll need to have that lead-lined apron over us to make sure our reproductive organs are shielded from ionizing radiation. And, of course, the hygienist or technician must duck behind a lead partition because of the cumulative effect of any radiation that might bounce around the room. Not abiding by these rules will cause our cancer risk to increase substantially and may cause mutations in any children born after exposure of parental glands. All radiation is dangerous, and its danger is cumulative.

The thesis of this book contradicts such common knowledge. While it is unquestionable that very high levels of radiation can cause death, illness, and the increased risk of cancer, there is unimpeachable evidence that low levels of radiation are not harmful to human life at all. In fact, we require additional exposure to ionizing radiation in order to achieve our optimum health and vitality.

It is my purpose in this book to convince you that:

• Low levels of ionizing radiation (that which we call nuclear or atomic radiation) are not harmful to human beings—or any other living creatures for that matter;

• With rare exceptions, we live in an environment where most of us could achieve improved health and vitality by increasing our exposure to radiation;

• While cancer is one of the three hazards of radiation (the other two being radiation sickness and death from huge doses), exposure to low levels of radiation would actually reduce occurrences of cancer; and

• Society is being denied a virtually unlimited source of clean energy with unimaginable benefits because of this irrational fear of radiation.

Certainly these statements may sound like the ravings of a mad man. I fully understand that and realize that it is up to me to provide adequate evidence to support my claims—which is mostly what this book is about. But first I’d like to lay a little groundwork, starting with a question that must be bothering you. If low levels of radiation are not harmful and appear to be beneficial, why aren’t scientists publishing papers about this and attempting to correct the public’s misconceptions about radiation effects?

That’s an easy one. They are. And they too are amazed that what some see as the story of the decade is being totally ignored by the general media. Even those of us who diligently try to keep up with the news by reading a variety of news sources are unlikely to come across the subject (unless we are regular readers of Health Physics or The Journal of Radiation Research).

This book cites well over a hundred scientists—almost all with doctorates in their fields of specialty—that have published reams of data in more than fifty peer-reviewed scientific journals and scores of government documents. They are trying desperately to communicate their experimental results and the implications thereof to the public.

Many of them have not figured out that this is a Green Issue and that the reporters and editors are not about to go against their Green friends who reflexively demonize anything considered to be pro-nuclear. But they’re learning. If low levels of radiation are realized to be benign, then there goes the argument against nuclear power—and that may well tumble the house of cards that is the Green-Primitivists’ argument against an industrialized society.

While there are, as mentioned, hundreds of scientists who are pushing for a truthful assessment of the effects of low levels of radiation, it was not always so. The one figure whose research in this area has been pivotal is Professor T.D. Luckey, now-retired chairman of the Biochemistry Department at the University of Missouri School of Medicine. His 1980 book Hormesis with Ionizing Radiation1 cited more than a thousand experiments indicating that small amounts of radiation promoted growth and prolonged life in non-mammalian subjects. I can recall hearing of the book in 1981 and expecting a firestorm of interest in the beneficial uses of radiation. Not a word.

Dr. Luckey’s second book, Radiation Hormesis,2 is the seminal work on the subject of beneficial effects of radiation on humans and other mammals. By this time other researchers had concluded there was at least a threshold of radiation exposure below which there were no adverse effects. But Luckey would not back down from his hypothesis: that most of us require additional ionizing radiation for optimal health and well being. The evidence, as you will see, makes a compelling argument. But still not a word in the general media. It is from Luckey’s second book that much of the material herein has been harvested.

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This book is about radiation hormesis—a phenomenon virtually unknown outside of certain scientific circles, but the understanding of which offers the potential for significant health benefits and a pathway to rational treatment of radiation dangers. By reopening access to the wonders of nuclear technology, it promotes a more abundant life for mankind. Since the radiation hormesis hypothesis was put forth, it has caused a major upheaval in the scientific community about the effects of low-level radiation. At the same time, there has been an almost complete news blackout for the rest of us. I hope this book will help lift that veil.

The plan here is to provide you with information that helps cut through the confusing units of radiation intensity, its doses, the types of radiation, and other information that should allow you to make sense of the evidence. Then most of the book is in the form of evidence from experiments that were intended as studies of high-level effects, but in which the low-level data were also recorded. There are also several important investigations (with huge numbers of participants) where it was anticipated that the subjects would experience more cancer with an increase in radiation exposure, only to find that the exact opposite occurred.

At the outset you should know that there is nothing I can claim as original in the following pages. I am but an engineer reporting the results of scientists who have done the experiments or epidemiologists who have compiled and analyzed data related to the effects of low levels of exposure. Being free to pick and choose, I’ve selected the studies I thought were most interesting and indicative of hormesis. However I did not exclude any because they showed opposite results. While I am certainly aware that there are many with opinions to the contrary, those who opine that low-level radiation is a danger have no data and must rely on extrapolations—and indeed, it is these very extrapolations that are the problem.

To Work, Dear Reader

You also have a job: It is to be totally skeptical of everything you read here. Doubt every sentence until I have presented sufficient evidence to back it up. There is an unbelievably large body of evidence about the effects of low doses of radiation on health, and some ninety-eight percent of it supports the hormesis model. I consider it quite an adventure to expose you to just a fraction of it.

Carefully and critically examine the evidence that is put forth here, and when you do, I believe that you will agree that the case I am making is indeed supported by the facts. And no longer will you allow the wool to be pulled over your eyes or those of your family, friends, and associates.

Let’s begin by looking at how our attitudes toward radiation have changed during the past few decades.

1 CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida, 1980 (out of print).

2 CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida, 1991. Available from CRC Press, 2000 NW Corporate Blvd., Boca Raton, FL 33431, for $195 plus shipping.

Chapter 2

I Still Have My Toes

We have got to stop science and scientific

progress.... Facts separate people.

—Abby Hoffman

DATELINE: MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE; circa 1950: When my mother would take me to buy shoes in my pre-teen years, we would use the shoe store’s fluoroscope to check the fit of shoes on my rapidly growing feet. I thoroughly enjoyed my chance to be like Superman with X-ray vision, seeing my toe bones wiggle through layers of rubber and canvas. Of course I would have to check several pairs of shoes each visit. And there were three or four visits every year.

DATELINE: EUROPE; May 1986: After the Chernobyl accident, there was, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, an increase of between 100,000 and 200,000 European babies who were intentionally aborted by their mothers. These were not unwanted fetuses. The babies’ mothers had been convinced they might be carrying nuclear monsters.

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What is the significant of these two events, separated as they are in time and distance? In my opinion, they show the sea change in our attitude toward radiation dangers—and provide a good example of the widespread ignorance of the means and units by which dangers can be quantified.

While we’ll get around to using proper units to describe radiation and its biological effects a little later, for now let’s just call the radiation I got from inspecting my toes through the fluoroscope as one SXR (Shoe X-Ray.) We’ll compare this dose to the doses received by the Europeans after Chernobyl.

Obviously the amount of radiation received from the accident at Chernobyl would be strongly dependent on geography. In Greece, where abortions were epidemic, the dose from Chernobyl was about 1.4 SXR units. This is the equivalent of the additional radiation received from background sources in nineteen months of living in Colorado instead of Texas. In Italy it was 0.8 SXR, in France less than 0.5 SXR. The increase over background radiation in Spain and Portugal was not really measurable, as the tiny theoretical increases disappeared below the slightest variations in natural background radiation.

So, what has changed in the forty-odd years since we didn’t give a thought to using the shoe fluoroscope, and today, when mothers abort their children because of a mind-distorting fear that trivial amounts of radiation would cause genetic dangers to their in utero children? And we should remember, all of this occurred long after data were widely available showing no genetic damage or excessive mutations (over the approximately 6% rate of naturally occurring genetic defects) reported in extensive investigations of Japanese mothers exposed to 100,000 times the radiation received by women downwind of the Chernobyl fire.

Before going on, though, let’s look at the radiation on the borders of U.S. nuclear power plants, and also review the Three Mile Island disaster that anti-nuclear activists want so badly for us to consider as being on the same order of magnitude as Chernobyl.

Under U.S. law, it is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that regulates the amount of radiation that a nuclear power plant can emit annually at its boundary. In practice, the plants seldom approach this limit, but it amounts to just under 3% of a SXR. So, if you lived next to a power plant emitting its maximum for thirty-five years, you’d get the same amount of radiation I did each time I pushed the button to see if my Keds were large enough to be worn out before my toes pushed through.

But what about accidents, you might ask, such as the catastrophe at Three Mile Island?

In our worst nuclear plant accident, the survivors living within a few miles of the disaster at TMI were subjected to a withering 0.6% of an SXR—but only if they had remained unclothed, outside, during the entire incident. Those who remained on site for the duration would have been exposed to just under one-half of an SXR.

The subject of radiation-causing mutations has been a favorite topic for cartoonist and comedy writers, as evidenced by the Cone Heads on Saturday Night Live and the brain-scrambled nuclear plant worker Homer Simpson. Only one problem: meticulous studies of the Japanese A-bomb survivors (over a fifty-plus-year period) have not uncovered any evidence of radiation-induced genetic abnormalities. But who cares about evidence?

Cartoon reprinted with cartoonist John Deering’s permission

But weren’t there injuries at TMI? Only if you consider anxiety an injury. All the reported afflictions consisted of people who were either mentally or physiologically harmed by the media’s sensationalistic mishandling of the incident. Ironically, those who evacuated to the homes of relatives in Denver would have received more additional radiation in a one-day stay than had they lain naked in the front yard of their Harrisburg homes during that week of media frenzy.1

Falling for the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) Theory

Sadly, and ironically, the change in our attitudes toward radiation is due to an assumption—an assumption originally made to protect us from excessive exposure, but which has turned into the real nuclear monster. We will examine it in detail later, but for now it might be best explained with an analogy to falling.

If we have found that falling 100 feet to a concrete floor is fatal in 100% of the cases and falling from fifty feet is fatal in 50% of them, we might logically expect the risk from falling twenty-five feet would result in a 25% death rate. But let’s go on. At one foot, according to this linear relationship between falling and death, we would expect one percent of the victims to die. At one inch, about 0.1%.

Yeah? Do you really think that out of 10,000 people who fall an inch, ten of them will die? If this linear relationship were the case, we would have thousands of people die every day from falling off their bathroom scales. Manhattan would have innumerable bodies in the street everyday from people falling off the curbs.

Everyone sees how ridiculous this linear relationship is in an activity like falling that we know about, yet we have been convinced to believe that this relationship is true for our response to ionizing radiation—a subject that very few of us understand. In later chapters we will look at the units that define radiation and how these compare to the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) theory of radiation at low doses—but first let’s examine another scientific abomination.

Collective Dose

You are not going to believe a concept that has guided our radiation-protection formulators for the past forty or fifty years. But, as my hero Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up. It’s called collective dose, and it works like this: If 100 aspirins are a fatal dose for an individual, then when 100 people take one aspirin each, they have had a collective dose of 100 aspirins—therefore one of them is going to die. This is the reason you see all these dead people scattered all over the landscape… aspirin COD (Collective Over Dose).

It is this exact concept that has governed regulators in developing the collective dose policy that, in tandem with the LNT theory, has contributed to the regulatory madness of the EPA and NRC.

Since I suspect you still must think I’m putting you on about collective dose, allow me to refer to page 10 in this very large, impressive volume on my desk—The Health Physics and Radiological Health Handbook (Revised Edition).2 It shows the Global Collective Dose of carbon-14 released by the nuclear power industry to be 18,000 person-Sieverts—a collective dose measurement unit. What does that mean? It tells us that of the 6 billion people on earth exposed to these airborne emissions, 4.5 of them will die from the effects of carbon-14 emitted from nuclear power plants. How have we learned about these tragic deaths? Well, we know (from collective dose theory) that 4,000 person-Sieverts causes one excess death. So somewhere, some four and a half people on our terrestrial ball are going to die from this carbon-14 released from more than 440 power reactors.

Gee, could that be what did my grandmother in?

The average exposure here is less than 0.00003 SXR—an infinitesimally small amount, equivalent to a few minutes of normal background radiation. Yet, we are told that we should have faith in this unproven and unprovable theory—and to spend millions of our tax (or utility bill) dollars to save these 4.5 unfortunates who would otherwise be keeling over from this blast of searing radiation.

Time Out for a Measurement

Why, in a book about hormesis are we branching off into the areas of Linear No-Threshold theory and collective dose? Because the LNT and collective dose theories are both matters that directly affect public policy. Rules and laws are made on the basis of these outmoded theories, and such restrictions stand in the way of any growth of marketplace interest in hormesis either as a therapy or as an immune-system stimulant. Advocates of hormesis—and you will see they are both numerous and impressive—consider burial of the LNT the first step toward public consideration and investigation of the hormesis phenomenon.