Radio-Adaptive Response to Environmental Exposures at Chernobyl

Here's an Interesting research pointing to the possibility of an hormesis effect of low level radiation. Basically, this means that low level radiation (up to 1000x normal level) for 45 days, can protect you from high intensity radiation and protect you from future damages.

The genetic consequences resulting from environmental exposure to ionizing radiation have a significant impact on both radiation regulatory policies and the comprehension of the human health risks associated with radiation exposure. The primary objectives of the study were to assess 1) genotoxicity of exposure to radiation as a function of absorbed dose and dose rate, and 2) induction of a radio-adaptive response following a priming dose at varying dose rates. Results demonstrated that sub-acute environmental exposures of 10cGy gamma radiation resulted in indistinguishable levels of chromosomal damage as compared to controls. A radio-adaptive response was observed in all experimental groups, exposed to a subsequent acute challenge dose of 1.5 Gy, demonstrating that low dose rates of low energy transfer (LET) radiation are effective in reducing genetic damage from a subsequent acute low-LET radiation exposure. Furthermore, the data presented herein demonstrate a potential beneficial effect of sub-chronic exposure to low levels of low-LET radiation in an environmental setting and do not support the Linear No Threshold (LNT) hypothesis.

Here's a video (in french) explaining this research.


Another study show the same conclusion: MIT study suggests that at low dose-rate, radiation poses little risk to DNA

it’s believed that all radiation is bad for you, and any time you get a little bit of radiation, it adds up and your risk of cancer goes up,” says Boreham, who was not involved in this study. “There’s now evidence building that that is not the case.”

LNT from the point of view of the academy of medicine of France.

Statement by the Academy of Medicine of France, December 4, 2001  source

4 December 2001 Medical Irradiation, Radioactivity Releases, and Disinformation: An opinion by the Academy of Medicine The Academy of Medicine, preoccupied by the problems that arose in the public about medical exposure to X rays and radioactive releases in the environment, and erroneous information that these subjects give rise to, wishes to give an opinion on this subject. Humanity is exposed to ionizing radiation Since the beginning, life developed in a bath of ionizing radiation to which it is adapted. These radiations have a cosmic origin or originate in the earthly crust where, since the creation of the earth, the unstable isotopes of the elements of very long physical half-lives remain: thorium, uranium, potassium, and rubidium. Natural exposure results therefore from internal and external sources, both characterized by various physical properties and different effects on human body. The presence of radionuclides in the environment results in an average radioactivity of 10,000 Bq in the human body, essentially from carbon-14 and from potassium-40 whose concentration is regulated by homeostatic control of intracellular potassium content. Average exposure of humans to natural sources is evaluated to 2.4 mSv per year expressed as effective dose. It exists nevertheless with important variations according to the altitude and nature of the rock and soils in the ground, generally varying from 1 to 10 mSv, and attaining more than 100 mSv in wide regions such as Kerala in India, or the city of Ramsar in Iran (1). These natural variations involve different target tissues for the dose being delivered, such as lung for radon, kidney for uranium, bones for radium, and bones, hepatic and systemic phagocytes for thorium, of which the behavior and the radiological characteristics are similar to those of plutonium. To natural background irradiation is added, since the end of the 19th century, a diagnostic medical irradiation which delivers an average of about 1 mSv per year, but with variations from less than 1 mSv to more than 20 mSv per year. And last, since 1950, it is necessary to add irradiations of industrial origin - notably the one from producing electricity by nuclear energy (extraction and treatment of uranium, functioning of reactors, etc.) corresponding to an exposure of the order 0.01 to 0.02 mSv per year - and one of the other natural sources, from coal extraction and burning to 0.01 mSv per year. In addition, radioactivity releases to the atmosphere contribute to an average exposure of 0.005 mSv/yr, and the Tchernobyl accident to about 0.002 mSv/yr (1). In measuring dose effectiveness, the biological effects of the different types of ionizing radiation are identical whether their origin is natural or artificial. Exposure of workers to ionizing radiation (200,000 in France, of which more of than half are in the medical sector) results, in France, in an average exposure of 2 mSv per year (OPRI annual report) with less then 1% surpassing the average statutory limit of 20 mSv per year. Except for diagnostic irradiations, these exposures are characterized by low dose rate, chronic irradiation doses. This aspect distinguishes them clearly from accidental and therapeutic irradiations that are performed at high dose-rate, causing instantaneous accumulation of damaged molecules that perturb components of cellular repair mechanisms, with as little as a few absorbed mGy in a few minutes (2). Dismantling of nuclear power plants and nuclear waste storage are activities that make small dose increases to the populations at very low dose rates (about 0.005 µSv per year for iodine-129 for example) (1), essentially by transfer in the food chain of various man-made radionuclides of long half-lives leading to either: –homogenous exposure of the whole body (as in the case of natural potassium-40), or to –selective organ exposure, e.g., to the large intestine, bone, liver and kidney, as in the case of the natural isotopes of uranium and thorium. It is therefore legitimate to infer their possible effects on human health from those known to result from natural sources which expose populations of many millions of residents. The health consequences of the exposure of humans to a few mSv. There exists data (3) establishing that high natural exposure is associated in adults to an increased rate of chromosome aberrations of the circulating lymphocytes, a biological indicator of exposure. It cannot be concluded, however, that this is an index of harm since there are detected no global increase of cancer risk (4), increase of congenital malformations (5), or abnormalities induced by cytogenetic effects with newborns (6), in the well-studied population of the particular highly-exposed region of Kerala India to external irradiation and to internal contamination. Identical conclusions are obtained in the exposed Chinese populations (7-8). And last, as stated by the NCRP in the United States (9): «It is important to notice that the incidence of cancers in most of the exposed populations to low-dose radiation has not been found to be increased, and that in most of the cases this incidence seems to have been reduced».

The hypothesis of the risks of cancer induced by low doses and dose-rates is founded on the extrapolation of data of highly-exposed human groups, applying the risk as being constantly proportional to the received dose without being limited by a threshold, the linear no-threshold (LNT) assumption. This hypothesis conflicts with itself and has many scientific objections (10); and it is contradicted by experimental data (11) and epidemiology. In the groups having received more than 200 mSv as adults, and 100 mSv as infants, excesses of cancer have been observed: in e.g., Japanese atomic bomb survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, irradiated medical patients, nuclear workers, and residents of the former-USSR contaminated by nuclear wastes. No excess of cancers has been observed for doses lower than 100 mSv. A doubt remains nevertheless in the case of irradiation for x-ray in utero from 10 mSv because the epidemiological data are contradictory (12). Having not observed excess cancer does not allow an effect for low doses to be excluded because of statistical limitations. Nevertheless it is necessary to recall that the linear theory with no threshold (LNT): -is contradicted by the observation of thresholds for bone cancers induced by radium-226, and cancers of the liver induced by Thorotrast; -is not compatible with induced leukemias in Hiroshima, nor with the patients treated by radioactive iodine (1,10,13). Besides, the historic epidemiological study of the British radiologists for the period 1897-1997 (14) showed that for the registered radiologists after 1954 these practitioners have no excess of cancers in comparison with their non-radiologist colleagues, with a tendency to a lower cancer rate, as in the case of populations described by the NCRP (9). Similar deficits were observed for many groups of exposed professional workers to ionizing radiation, notably radiologic technicians: while the frequency of cancers increased in their jobs during the period when there was limited radiation protection, the excesses of cancers disappeared when regulatory limits were reduced to 50 mSv/yr, as enforceable up to 1990 (12). These observations, associated with the recent biological data, showing complexity and the variety of molecular and cellular mechanisms that control cell survival and mutagenesis according to the dose and dose-rate (1,2,11,13), remove all scientific rationale to a linear extrapolation that overestimates very widely the effects of low doses and dose-rates. One cannot add the exposures of a few mSv/yr, and a fortiori lower than 0.02 mSv/yr, delivered to a large number of individuals (as done with the use of collective doses) to estimate the risk of excess cancers (15). The Academy of Medicine, joining the position of the large international institutions, strongly affirms that such calculations have no scientific validity, notably to evaluate the associated risks to radiation, such as the effects claimed outside the former-USSR from the fallout from Tchernobyl. The UNSCEAR 2000 report and the controversy with the OCHA. The Tchernobyl catastrophe has caused to this day about 2,000 cancers of the thyroid in children, essentially from exposure to iodine-131 and the short-lived iodine isotopes. The delivered doses to the thyroid were on average of the order of 1 Gy, and of 3 Gy on average in the most exposed regions (16). This carcinogenic effect is therefore in keeping with the sum total of our knowledge of radiation risks. In 2000, UNSCEAR concluded that there is an absence of excess leukemias and of cancer other than thyroid cancer in the population around Tchernobyl. It also did not find a relationship between the exposures to radiation and congenital malformations in these populations (1). This conclusion was questioned in 2001 by the OCHA, the humanitarian organization of the UN, but the OCHA publication was refuted in a response by the UNSCEAR committee, which alone has the medical and scientific competence to speak with the name the UN and of the WHO on this subject (17). A conference was therefore held in Kiev in June 2001, with the WHO, OCHA, UNSCEAR, ICRP and IAEA, and the conclusions have been published (annex). These conclusions find that the health conditions are alarming because of the general deterioration of the health and social conditions, notably in Belarus, but do not contradict the UNSCEAR conclusions. In fact, this deterioration is probably caused by the living conditions of the relocated populations, associated with psycho-sociological factors. Different questions have been raised that do appear to necessitate epidemiological research of the conditions of the catastrophe consisting of multiple susceptible factors that altered the health of populations: this is the recommendation of the Kiev conference. It is possible to reduce human exposure to ionizing radiation, in particular of radiation medical origin, with the necessary means. Radiological examinations represent, by very far, the principal cause of irradiation of human origin (effective average dose of about 1 mSv/yr in France). The recent direction of the European Union introduces two notions to this subject: -cost-optimization (to reduce as much as possible the dose per examination), -and justification (to evaluate the benefit and the risk of each examination, and to not practice it unless it is advantageous). These principles necessitate therefore the evaluation of effective doses received by the examined subject and the relevant risks. Now, according to the examinations and the techniques used, the effective doses vary from a fraction of a mSv to several tens of mSv (examinations by x-ray scanners or radiological interventions) and the risks vary widely according to age. An over-evaluation of risks could deprive a child of a useful examination; inversely, an under-evaluation could favor the multiplication of medical X ray examinations that are not useful. The Academy counsels therefore, in a first step: 1) to focus on the study and evaluation of examinations from which the potential risks are the largest: x-ray scans with young subjects, multiple radiological examinations with premature interventional angiography; 2) to promote the likely techniques to reduce or to eliminate irradiation without harm to the quality of clinical information and to stimulate the technical and basic research in this area; 3) to conduct epidemiological studies on groups of patients, notably infants, which have received the most important doses from radiological examinations; and 4) to favor the initial and continuing training of clinicians in matters of radiation protection. It is unacceptable, while irradiation of medical origin represents, in France, 95% of the irradiation added to the natural background, that there is little benefit to affect reduction in the industrial environment by applying radiation protection at very high costs. It is necessary to define health priorities in the matter of releases. Outside of this context, some recommendations can be undertaken concerning the problem of radiation releases in the matter of health. It appears essential to support epidemiological studies concerning the populations exposed naturally to high-level background radiation, and even concerning the populations of the ex-USSR that were massively exposed to radioactivity releases and to other pollution. In the framework of studies dealing with potential health effects of nuclear waste management, the priority isotopes should not be selected according to the collective dose that some would use, but according to the potential doses to individuals because the calculated collective doses from low individual doses to a few microSieverts cannot have any effect on health. A significant national effort should be undertaken, as the one undertaken in the framework of the programs of the U.S. DOE, on the biological mechanisms in the cellular response to doses below 100 mSv, in particular, health effects from DNA repair, cell signaling, and the hereditary transmission in DNA sequence encoding of parental DNA modified by irradiation.

– Recommendations – The Academy of Medicine: 1 – recommends increased effort for radiation protection in the area of radiological examinations, on the one hand to reduce received doses from certain types of examinations (x-ray scans with infants, interventional angiography, lung X ray examinations with premature treatments, etc…), and on the other hand, to allow radiology services, notably in radio-pediatrics, to obtain benefits of well-educated physicists for dosimetry and quality control of the devices, in a way similar to that previously undertaken with mammography in breast cancer surveys. It recommends to this end to support clinical and technical research in this area. 2 – recommends an effort of basic research: on the biological mechanisms activated by the repair of DNA damage after low doses up to 100 mSv; and on the effects of these doses on the exchanges of intra- and inter-cellular molecular signals. 3 – denounces utilization of the linear no-threshold (LNT) relation to estimate the effect of low doses to a few mSv (of the order of magnitude of variations of natural radiation in France) and a fortiori of doses hundreds of times lower, such as those caused by radioactive releases, or 20 times lower, such as those resulting in France from the fallout of radioactive materials from the Tchernobyl accident. It associates with many international institutions to denounce improper utilization of the concept of the collective dose to this end. These procedures are without any scientific validity, even if they appear be convenient to administrative ends. 4 – subscribes to the conclusions of the 2000 Report of the Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation of the United Nations (UNSCEAR) concerning the analysis of health consequences of the Tchernobyl accident, and denounces the propagation of allegations concerning excesses of other cancers than the thyroid cancer, and excesses of congenital malformations. 5 – recommends introduction of the ADIR (Annual Dose of Incorporated Radioactivity, being equivalent to 0.2 mSv, resulting from homogeneous exposure of the human body to natural potassium-40 and carbon-14) as this dose equivalent is almost constant whatever the size of the individual and the geographic region. 6 – The Academy of Medicine, in accordance with its October 3rd 2000 statement, continues to recommended maintaining without modification the European directive concerning regulatory limits (to 100 mSv/5yr). To substitute dose limits of 20 mSv/yr would reduce the flexibility of the European norm, all without any health advantage, and would harm the functioning of medical radiology services while making the improvement of applicable techniques more difficult. Glossary -Bq or becquerel, the radioactivity characterized by a disintegration per second. In the human body 10,000 Bq of the natural sources represent 1 ADRI that is equivalent by convention to a dose equivalent of 0.2 mSv -Gy or gray, the absorbed dose corresponding to 1 joule per kg. -Sv or sievert, the unit of equivalent dose obtained from the product of the dose absorbed by the weighting factor for radiation quality (1 for X, beta and gamma radiations … 20 for alpha radiation). The effective dose, also expressed in Sv, is the product of the dose equivalent by the weighting factor for organs (0.05 for the thyroid… 1 for the entire body). IAEA: International Atomic Energy Agency ADRI: Annual Dose of Incorporated Radioactivity, recommendation G. Charpak. DOE: Department of Energy, U.S. ICRP: International Commission on Radiation Protection NCRP: National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (USA) OCHA: Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs WHO: World Health Organization UNSCEAR: United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation References: UNSCEAR: Sources and effects of ionizing radiation, Report to the General Assembly, with annexes, United Nations, 2000. Feinendegen L, Pollycove M, Biologic Responses to Low Doses of Ionizing Radiation: Detriment Versus Hormesis, J Nuclear Medicine, 42, 7, 17N-27N and 26N – 37N, 2001. BEIR V: Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation. Health effects of exposure to low levels of ionizing radiations. National US Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, Washington 1990. Nair MK, Nambi KS, Amma NS, Gangadharan P, Jayalekshmi P, Jayadevan S, Cherian V, Reghuram KN Population study in the high natural background radiation area of Kerala, India. Radiat Res. 152, 145-148S, 1999 Jaikrishnan J'S and al, Genetic monitoring of the human population from high-level natural radiation areas of Kerala on the southwest coast of India. Prevalence of congenital malformations in newborns. Radiat Res 152, 149-153S, 1999. Cheryan VD et al. Genetic monitoring of the human population from high level natural radiation areas of Kerala on the southwest coast of India incidence of numerical structural and chromosomal aberrations in the lymphocytes of newborns. Radiat Res. 152, 154-158S, 1999. Tao Z J Radiat Res (Tokyo) 41 Suppl:31-4, 2000. Wei LX, Sugahara T. High background radiation area in china. J Rad. Research (Tokyo) 41, Suppl. 1-76, 2000. National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements – Evaluation of the linear non-threshold model for ionizing radiation – NCRP-136, Bethesda MD, USA, 2001. Academy of Sciences – secured Problems of the effects of the low doses of ionizing radiations. Report 34, Oct 1995. Tanooka H. Threshold dose-response in radiation carcinogenesis: an approach from chronic alpha-irradiation experiments and a review of non-tumour doses. Int. J Radiat. Biol., 77, 541-551, 2001 IARC 2000 – Monographs on the evaluation of carcinogenic risks to humans, Vol. 75, Ionizing radiation - IARC, Lyon, France Academy of Sciences – Symposium on risk due to carcinogens from ionizing radiation – Report, Academy of Sciences, Series III, 322, 81-256, 1999 Berrington HAS. Darby SC, Weiss HA., Doll R. – 100 years of observation on British radiologists mortality from cancer and other causes 1897-1997. British Journal of Radiology, 74, 507-519, 2001 BRPS Symposium, Warrenton: Bridging radiation policy and science (K.L. Mossman et al. Ed.) 2000 IAEA, Final Report, Belarus, Ukrainian and Russian 2001: Health effects of the Tchernobyl accident. Holm LE (UNSCEAR Chairman) Chernobyl effects. Lancet, 356, 344, 2000 European Directive 97/43 on radiological examinations, 1997

It's the end of the world... Again... Hum...

Today, December 30th 2011, we read this propaganda piece in "The Gazette" and distributed, without analysis by Radio-Canada on twitter.

 

They did not even copied the right information. 2018 or 2020... It's important to get the end date right ;-)

Quebec nears climate tipping point

ABOVE-AVERAGE TEMPERATURES WERE RECORDED DURING EVERY SEASON OF 2011. And while winter-weary Quebecers might welcome the warmer weather, it sends a more sinister message to scientists who see it as evidence that, by 2020, temperatures in Quebec will exceed the 2-degree tipping point they say will lead to catastrophic climate change. William Marsden reports, Page A3. WHAT KIND OF ENERGY IS QUEBEC USING - and what does it need? Our appetite will fuel debate in 2012, Lynn Moore writes. Page B1

Couple of points to note when you read this:

• Above average temperatures..
• Which data set did they take?  There are so many out there, without this vital information, it's hard to know what they are talking about.
• Here's a graph of all data set for the last 10 years...

• "evidence that, by 2020, temperatures in Quebec will exceed the 2-degree tipping point"
• Evidence?  By 2020?, what data set extrapolation did they used?  What models?  Why 2 degrees?  All those are assumptions, extrapolations, based on mathematical models often unproven and unable to track real life data set.
• lead to catastrophic climate change
• Catastrophic climate change!!! Wow, 2 degrees more would be a catastrophe, if this ever happen, what are the proof that this will be a catastrophe, continue reading... we have seen worst in the past.
• The rest of the small article, last 2 lines, does not make sense at all... No references provided on the web page of the Gazette.

I classify this small article as pure propaganda... When I read this I think of Mulder in X-files... I WANT TO BELIEVE!

Here's some real information that can help you to judge by yourself, if you are not the type that does believe everything that the mass media throws at you!

In all the data set, I think in my humble opinion that the more precises/accurate is the UAH dataset that started in 1978 and is based on microwave sounding units on polar orbiting satellites. Here's all the data since it started.  I plotted a green line for a running average of 13 months.  I also plotted two regression lines before and after the mount Pinatubo event.  Do you see in there a maximum average temperature higher than other years?  You also need to note the range of change since 1978, that is for that last 33 years...

But today's temperature data need to be put in perceptive on a longer time scale... Here's a study of the last 2485 years in the China region, it clearly shows that the temperature in the past was higher then today, if the tipping point theory was right, we should have seen a couple of time a run-away temperature on the planet where the planet would have burn to a crisp!  But if you read on this term "tipping point" it's not even clear what it means!.

Tree-ring-based temperature reconstruction for the central-eastern Tibetan Plateau during the past 2485 years (gray line), the 40-year moving average (thick black line) and the 40-year running standard deviation (thin black line); the horizontal line is the mean temperature for the 2485 years.

Here's another study for that last 4000 years in Greenland... As you see, many time, again, the climate was warmer.

Past 4000 years of
Greenland temperature. Thick blue line and band are the same as above. Thick green line represents 100‐year moving
averages. Black and red lines are the Summit [Box et al., 2009] and AWS [Stearns and Weidner, 1991; Shuman et al., 2001;
Steffen and Box, 2001; Vaarby‐Laursen, 2010] decadal average temperature, respectively. Blue and pink rectangles are the
periods of 1000–2010 C.E. (Figure 1, middle) and 1840–2010 C.E. (Figure 1, top), respectively. Present temperature is
calculated from the inversion adjusted AWS decadal average temperature (2001–2010) as −29.9°C

From Wikipedia, I highlighted in red what I think is missing in most climate related journalism reports.

The elements of journalism

According to The Elements of Journalism, a book by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, there are nine elements of journalism.^[2] In order for a journalist to fulfill their duty of providing the people with the information, they need to be free and self-governing. They must follow these guidelines:

1. Journalism's first obligation is to the truth.
2. Its first loyalty is to the citizens.
3. Its essence is discipline of verification.
4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover.
5. It must serve as an independent monitor of power.
6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.
7. It must strive to make the news significant, interesting, and relevant.
8. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional.
9. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience.

In the April 2007 edition of the book,^[3] they added the last element, the rights and responsibilities of citizens to make it a total of ten elements of journalism.

So when you read stuff in the mass media, ask yourself a couple of question and always be skeptical!  Your way of live and of future generations may depend on it.

New research in low dose radiation disprove LNT

Following on my previous articles on LNT that you should read before this one. Here's some good news on this important research that could change the way we approach low dose radiation.

• September 2011 article:
• Low level radiation and Linear no threshold (LNT) theory. We should revisit our regulation.
• October 2011 article:
• Dr. Edward Calabrese: The Fraud of LNT and Future of Radiation

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New Take on Impacts of Low Dose Radiation
Berkeley Lab Researchers Find Evidence Suggesting Risk May Not Be Proportional to Dose at Low Dose Levels

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), through a combination of time-lapse live imaging and mathematical modeling of a special line of human breast cells, have found evidence to suggest that for low dose levels of ionizing radiation, cancer risks may not be directly proportional to dose. This contradicts the standard model for predicting biological damage from ionizing radiation – the linear-no-threshold hypothesis or LNT – which holds that risk is directly proportional to dose at all levels of irradiation.

Imaging of a cell’s DNA damage response to radiation shows that 1.5 minutes after irradiation, the sizes and intensities of radiation induced foci (RIF) are small and weak, but 30 minutes later damage sites have clustered into larger and brighter RIF, probably reflecting DNA repair centers.

“Our data show that at lower doses of ionizing radiation, DNA repair mechanisms work much better than at higher doses,” says Mina Bissell, a world-renowned breast cancer researcher with Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division. “This non-linear DNA damage response casts doubt on the general assumption that any amount of ionizing radiation is harmful and additive.”

Bissell was part of a study led by Sylvain Costes, a biophysicist also with Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division, in which DNA damage response to low dose radiation was characterized simultaneously across both time and dose levels. This was done by measuring the number of RIF, for “radiation induced foci,” which are aggregations of proteins that repair double strand breaks, meaning the DNA double helix is completely severed.

“We hypothesize that contrary to what has long been thought, double strand breaks are not static entities but will rapidly cluster into preferred regions of the nucleus we call DNA repair centers as radiation exposure increases,” says Costes. “As a result of this clustering, a single RIF may reflect a center where multiple double strand breaks are rejoined. Such multiple repair activity increases the risks of broken DNA strands being incorrectly rejoined and that can lead to cancer.”

Berkeley Lab biophysicist Sylvain Costes is generating 3D time lapse of DNA repair centers in human cells to understand better how cancer may arise from DNA damage. (Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt, Berkeley Lab)

Costes and Bissell have published the results of their study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in a paper titled “Evidence for formation of DNA repair centers and dose-response nonlinearity in human cells.” Also co-authoring the paper were Teresa Neumaier, Joel Swenson, Christopher Pham, Aris Polyzos, Alvin Lo, PoAn Yang, Jane Dyball, Aroumougame Asaithamby, David Chen and Stefan Thalhammer.

The authors believe their study to be the first to report the clustering of DNA double strand breaks and the formation of DNA repair centers in human cells. The movement of the double strand breaks across relatively large distances of up to two microns led to more intensely active but fewer RIF. For example, 15 RIF per gray (Gy) were observed after exposure to two Gy of radiation, compared to approximately 64 RIF/Gy after exposure to 0.1Gy. One Gy equals one joule of ionizing radiation energy absorbed per kilogram of human tissue. A typical mammogram exposes a patient to about 0.01Gy.

Corresponding author Costes says the DNA repair centers may be a logical product of evolution.

“Humans evolved in an environment with very low levels of ionizing radiation, which makes it unlikely that a cell would suffer more than one double strand break at any given time,” he says. “A DNA repair center would seem to be an optimal way to deal with such sparse damage. It is like taking a broken car to a garage where all the equipment for repairs is available rather than to a random location with limited resources.”

However, when cells are exposed to ionizing radiation doses large enough to cause multiple double strand breaks at once, DNA repair centers become overwhelmed and the number of incorrect rejoinings of double strand breaks increases.

“It is the same as when dozens of broken cars are brought to the same garage at once, the quality of repair is likely to suffer,” Costes says.

The link between exposure to ionizing radiation and DNA damage that can give rise to cancerous cells is well-established. However, the standards for cancer risks have been based on data collected from survivors of the atomic bomb blasts in Japan during World War II. The LNT model was developed to extrapolate low dose cancer risk from high dose exposure because changes in cancer incidence following low dose irradiation are too small to be measurable. Extrapolation was done on a linear scale in accordance with certain assumptions and the laws of physics.

“Assuming that the human genome is a target of constant size, physics predicts DNA damage response will be proportional to dose leading to a linear scale,” Costes explains. “Epidemiological data from the survivors of the atomic bombs was found to be in agreement with this hypothesis and showed that cancer incidence increases with an increase in ionizing radiation dose above 0.1 Gy. Below such dose, the picture is not clear.”

Previous studies failed to detect the clustering of double break strands and the formation of DNA repair centers because they were based on single-time or single-dose measurements of RIF at a discrete time after the initial exposure to ionizing radiation. This yields a net number of RIF that does not account for RIF that have not yet appeared or RIF that have already made repairs and disappeared. The time-lapse imaging used by Costes, Bissell and their co-authors showed that RIF formation continues to occur well beyond the initial radiation exposure and after earlier repair issues have been resolved. Time-lapse imaging also indicates that double strand break clustering takes place before any RIF are formed.

“We hypothesize that double strand break clustering occurs rapidly after exposure to ionizing radiation and that RIF formation reflects the repair machinery put in place around a single cluster of double strand breaks,” Costes says. “Our results provide a more accurate model of RIF dose response, and underscore fundamental concerns about static image data analysis in the dynamic environment of the living cell.”

Previous studies also mostly involved fibroblast cells whereas Costes, Bissell and their colleagues examined epithelial cells, specifically an immortalized human breast cell line known as MCF10A, which has a much higher background of RIF than fibroblasts, even without ionizing irradiation. To compensate for this higher background, Costes developed a mathematical method that enables background to be corrected for on a per- nucleus basis in unirradiated cells. Still the use of a special line of immortalized breast cells is an issue that Costes and his colleagues plan to address.

“We are now looking at primary breast epithelial cells that have been removed from healthy donors to determine if our results are repeated beyond just a single cell line and under more realistic physiological conditions,” Costes says. “We’d also like to know if our findings hold true for fibroblasts as well as epithelial cells. Also, we’d like to know if double strand break clustering is the result of a random coalescence or if there is an active transport mechanism that moves these double strand breaks towards pre-existing DNA repair centers.”

Working in collaboration with Rafael Gomez-Sjoberg of Berkeley Lab’s Engineering Division, Costes and his group are also developing a special microfluidics lab-on-a-chip device that is integrated into an X-ray microbeam. The goal is to provide a means by which cells can be kept in a controlled microenvironment while being irradiated with multiple doses. This microfluidic array will be used to characterize DNA damage response in breast and blood cells collected from human donors.

“By characterizing DNA damage response in cells from many different human donors,” Costes says, “we should be able to determine the variation across humans and gain a better understanding of how sensitivity to DNA damage from ionizing radiation might vary from individual to individual.”

This research was supported by the DOE Office of Science.

L'agriculture verticale et autre technologie au service de l'humanité.

L'agriculture verticale

Vous avez sans doute lu les nouvelles récentes : nous avons franchi le cap des 7 milliards d'êtres humains sur la Terre le 31 octobre. Bon, tandis que les petits prophètes de malheur continuent leurs diatribes sur l'impact environnemental de ce qu'ils appellent l'explosion démographique et de l'avènement imminent d'ères de famines, il n'en reste pas moins qu’à l'heure actuelle, 925 millions d’êtres humains manque de nourriture.

Quand l’on regarde les faits, le système économique actuel place plutôt ses priorités dans une consommation éhontée pour un faible pourcentage de la population mondiale et une production de biocarburants utilisant des terres arables pour de l'éthanol. Cela est sans compter le rappel incessant de l'érosion des sols et bientôt le manque de terres arables pour l'agriculture. L'impact de ces pratiques pourrait augmenter alors que la population passera, selon les prédictions de l'O.N.U., à 9 milliards d'habitants en 2050. Une surface équivalente à celle du Brésil serait alors nécessaire pour nourrir tout ce beau monde.

Une économie de 30 à 60 % de nourriture serait possible en améliorant les systèmes de distribution de nourriture et en privilégiant la consommation directe aux humains. C’est le ratio qui se gaspille chaque année, selon l’organisation des Nations Unies pour l’alimentation et l’agriculture – F.A.O..

L'impact néfaste de l'agriculture commerciale actuelle :

L'utilisation massive de pesticides et d'insecticides doit également être abordée, car ils tuent peu à peu les insectes pollinisateurs — voir les débats sur les abeilles des cinq dernières années — et sont potentiellement cancérigènes. L’exploitation massive des terres cause un appauvrissement et une érosion prématurée des sols et un accroissement de la désertification.

Mis à part ces « bonnes » nouvelles, comment peut-on régler d'un seul coup tous ces problèmes tout en embellissant notre environnement? Puisqu'on en parle, aussi bien démontrer que l'innovation humaine ne connaît que les limites imposées par sa propre créativité.

L'idée provient d'un géologue, Gilbert Ellis Bailey, qui a publié en 1915 un livre sur « vertical farming ». Mais c'est Dickson Despommiers, professeur de microbiologie et de sciences environnementales à la New York Colombia University, qui a été incontestablement le fondateur de ce récent mouvement. Parti d'une idée folle, comme il l'a décrit lui-même en 1999. Dans une de ses classes, il parlait de faire de l’agriculture urbaine sur les toits des immeubles.



Le mouvement a pris tel un feu de poudre et s'est répandu très rapidement dans le monde entier en moins d'une décennie. Il lance alors l'idée d'implanter le procédé entièrement à un immeuble de 30 étages. Des architectes se sont alors lancés dans la conception d'éco-environnements, ou un cycle fermé de processus assure une utilisation intelligente des ressources. Dans un tel circuit fermé, rien ne se perd, rien ne se crée. Bien que l'idée ne soit encore qu'au stade expérimental, il existe actuellement six projets du genre :

1. The Plant à Chicago
2. Alpha farm à Manchester, qui sera la pièce de résistance pour l'exposition internationale de l'Angleterre en 2013
3. Un laboratoire de recherche à Suwon, en Corée du Sud, disposé sur trois étages sinon, il reste plusieurs usines à légumes au Japon, ou des compagnies telles que 
4. Terrasphere, 
5. Aerofarms
6. Valcent Verticrop.

D’une idée toute simple à l'origine a émergé ce que plusieurs appellent la prochaine grande révolution verte.
Ces essais n'en sont qu'à leurs balbutiements. Bien entendu, il demeure quelques obstacles sur la faisabilité d'un tel projet à grande échelle. Comme je le dis toujours, il suffit de combiner les savoirs actuels pour trouver les solutions aux problèmes.

Un des grands défis est l'alimentation électrique de telles structures. Selon certains calculs, cela prendrait huit fois la capacité des centrales électriques actuelles des États-Unis pour fournir la production lumineuse nécessaire à leurs besoins. Cependant, compte tenu des développements récents et progrès en matière de production d'énergie, il serait possible de fournir les besoins énergétiques d'un seul bâtiment grâce à des systèmes de pyrolyse ou gazéification au plasma des déchets, tels ceux fournis par la compagnie Terragon ou Plasco Energy Group. Sinon, à moins qu'il n'y ait une révolution de l'énergie et qu'elle coûte moins chère et soit moins dangereuse à produire (voir centrales nucléaires au thorium ou les réactions nucléaires à basse énergie — LENR), cela risque de poser encore quelques défis.

De nouvelles avancées à l'Université McGill concernant les lumières DEL permettent d'utiliser des spectres de différentes couleurs, pour stimuler la productivité des cultures tout en consommant 10 % de l'énergie des lumières actuelles.

De plus, les immeubles pourraient être construits avec le génie de la nature, tel qu'exposé par Michael Pawlyn. Les fenêtres pourraient être très solides et économiques à construire par un nouveau matériau économique et écologique nommé l’ETFE(2). Il s'agit d'une plaque de polymère pouvant être étiré sur une structure d'acier en trois couches et gonflée à l'air. Son coût est de 24 à 70 % moins à installer comparé au verre, supporte 400 fois son poids, est autonettoyant et recyclable. La lumière naturelle pourrait être ainsi maximisée, et ainsi limiterait l'utilisation de lumière artificielle.

Le volume de fruit et légume produit pourrait également être stimulé par une plus grande concentration de CO2 de l’ordre de 1200 ppm, augmentant potentiellement la croissance de 44 %.



Parlons maintenant des avantages, car ils sont légion :

• Nous parlons d'une production entièrement biologique et parfaite, 365 jours par année, sans pesticides et insecticides et ceci indépendamment des saisons.
• Nous parlons d'une commercialisation pouvant donner des milliers d'emplois dans les villes et une distribution locale et rapide de produits frais tout en limitant les dépenses de carburants fossiles.
• Nous parlons d'un rendement de 5 à 10 fois supérieur à celui de l'agriculture conventionnelle sur 10 fois moins de terrain.
• Nous parlons d'un procédé pouvant être implanté dans n'importe quel climat, peu importe le pays.
• Nous parlons d'une économie d'eau de l'ordre de 5 fois comparativement à l'agriculture normale.
• Bref, nous parlons d'un moyen de nourrir une population croissante, en bonne santé, tout en limitant l'impact environnemental de ce dernier.

Comme mentionné plus haut, tout serait pensé pour fermer le cycle de la consommation : de l'hydroponie combinée à de l'aquaculture, faisant l'élevage de plusieurs espèces de poissons tout en cultivant des laitues. Les déjections des poissons nourrissent les plantes en nutriments, l'eau étant également traitée, filtrée et recyclée. Les poissons seraient nourris grâce aux restes des cultures et des déchets des préparations dans les usines situées en dessous.

Un système de pyrolyse et/ou gazéification utiliserait les déchets non recyclables pour alimenter une partie du bâtiment en électricité, tout en récupérant de l’eau et autre matière. Un biodigesteur de biométhanisation pourrait aussi être utilisé pour prendre le relais avec les restes des usines de transformation des produits.

Des installations aéroponiques pourraient maximiser l'utilisation de l'eau – utilisant seulement 10 % d'eau comparée à l'agriculture intensive — des cultures maraîchères, de tomates, de concombres, de tous les types de salades, d'épinards et de laitues ainsi que des herbes et des épices. Ils peuvent également faire le même traitement grâce à un système de compte-gouttes et de cultures verticales, distribuant l'eau directement aux racines, et s'égouttant à d'autres plateaux superposés.

Une utopie que tout cela? Les projets en vigueur ne sont que les premiers pas vers un avenir meilleur si l'idée continue de faire son chemin tel qu'elle l'a fait déjà. Il est possible de rendre de telles infrastructures viables économiquement tout en augmentant le niveau de la dignité humaine. Le potentiel de ces technologies n'est plus un rêve, mais bien une réalité. Penseurs du monde, vous pouvez encore trouver d'autres manières d'améliorer la vie pour tous, autant pour le genre humain que pour la biodiversité de la planète.

Vidéo résumant bien les possibilités:


Vincent Blanchette

Remember cold fusion... Now LENR, Low Energy Nuclear Reactions

There have been lots of new development following Pons & Fleischmann Cold Fusion.

Now we are talking about LENR or Low Energy Nuclear Reactions.

Here's 3 presentations that occured at NASA on sept 22nd and some interesting slides extracted. More information and discussion here.

Zawodny Slides

Nelson Slides

Bushnell Slides

In Short, LENR , depending upon the TBD performance, appears to be capable of Revolutionizing Aerospace across the board. No other single technology even comes close to the potential impacts of LENR upon Agency Missions.

Some good video on the technology:

Low Energy Nuclear Revolution (English Version)


Cold Fusion More than Junk Science 60minutes 9-4-19 2 of 2


Dr. Robert Duncan on Cold Fusion at the Missouri Energy Summit 2009 Part 1-3 playlist

Dr. Edward Calabrese: The Fraud of LNT and Future of Radiation

Like I explained before, the LNT or Linear No Threshold seems to be based on fraudulent science.  Dr. Calabrese explain the history of the LNT and the future of radiation if our policies would be based on science.

If Vermont Yankee had an Incident like Fukushima

Good presentation on nuclear radiation and related topic.

Jones Seminar on Science, Technology, and Society.

"If Vermont Yankee had an Incident like Fukushima, What Would be the Responsibilities and Public Expectations of the Scientific Community?"

Presented by Harold Swartz, Dartmouth Medical School.



source


  The purpose of this presentation is:

1. To understand the medical implications of a total body exposure of an individual to high levels of ionizing radiation (greater than 1 Gray), and also, potential long-term effects.
2. To understand how to interpret the information and counsel colleagues and the public about radiation exposures in the environment.
3. To understand public health implications and actions that should be taken when there are potential exposures of large numbers of individuals to ionizing radiation as might occur with a major accident from a nuclear power plant or an attack by terrorists that involves ionizing radiation.
4. Delineate and differentiate between medical needs and risks between a nuclear device and an incident at a nuclear power plant.
5. Provide guidance for your responses to a radiation event (because people will believe you!).
6. Explain context and needs for dosimetry in large scale event.
7. Describe our current research and activities in responses to major radiation events.

About the Speaker

Harold Swartz, MD, MSPH, PhD is a Professor of Radiology, Medicine (Radiation Oncology), Physiology, Community and Family Medicine, Chemistry, and Engineering and the director of the Dartmouth EPR Center and the Dart-Dose CMCR. He is an internationally recognized biophysicist and radiation biologist who has especially been involved in the development of magnetic resonance for preclinical and clinical applications. He has done research and teaching on the biological effects of ionizing radiation since 1962 at Walter Reed, Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and Dartmouth. The EPR Center at Dartmouth is especially focused on developing and applying in vivo EPR for measurements of physiologically and pathophysiological parameters in vivo. He has developed, at Dartmouth, the first clinical program in EPR, which has a special emphasis on using the technique to measure radiation dose after the fact for purposes of triage and to advance cancer treatment by using repetitive measurements of oxygen to optimize delivery of cancer therapy. He has founded and directed national EPR Centers at the Medical College of Wisconsin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and at Dartmouth. He is the PI of one of the CMCR Centers, DART-DOSE CMCR, focusing on Physical Biodosimetry. He is the author/coauthor of approximately 450 papers and four books. He has received several international awards including the Zavoisky prize.

GreenPeace: Anti Science, Fear, Anti Nuclear, Climate Alarmists

Following some story about greenpeace... Click on the links for the full stories.

Patrick Moore: From Greenpeace Dove to Nuclear Power Phoenix
Summary

If energy, food and education are the building blocks of civilization, Greenpeace Cofounder Patrick Moore is using his role of "sensible environmentalist" to build support for the concept of sustainable power generation. In this exclusive interview with The Energy Report, Patrick proposes that industry and government work together to advance nuclear power in the United States as the most effective way to supply continuous energy to homes, businesses and institutions.

Excerpt

They [GreenPeace] are more aptly described as political or social activists, which is fine in its own right, but when you are starting to deal with complex issues of chemistry and biology, you do need a little grounding in science in order to make good decisions.

Greenpeace tended to take a more black-and-white approach to many of these issues, and today they are opposed to all nuclear energy, even though it's a safe and clean alternative to fossil fuels. They are opposed to genetic engineering even though this could help eliminate micronutrient deficiency or malnutrition around the world. They are opposed to sustainable forestry, even though it's the most renewable resource in the world. They are opposed to farming fish in the ocean, which is a way of taking pressure off of wild stocks, which are overfished.

I think we made the mistake of lumping nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons. Our original campaign was against nuclear war, and we painted everything nuclear as evil. Today that makes no sense at all to me. Nuclear medicine is obviously not evil. Those nuclear isotopes used in nuclear medicine are created in nuclear reactors. That's one of the things we can do with nuclear technology. Another one is to make energy that's clean and safe. 

Why is the New York Academy of Sciences allowing its name to be used in an anti-science FUD campaign?
Summary:

Greenpeace wrongly used a published volume from the NYAS (New York Academy of Sciences) to support unproven claims that close to 1 million people died from the Chernobyl disaster. The real number of deaths directly attributable to the materials released by the accident will end up to be very close to 50.

Excerpt

Greenpeace claims that “based on now available medical data, 985,000 people died as a result of the Chernobyl disaster.” The authority for this statement is “the book recently published by the New York Academy of Sciences.” That death-toll is not supportable by scientific evidence.

A 2005 review of the data by an informal group call the Chernobyl Forum, included a suggestion that, based on the LNT premise (that even a single gamma ray could cause a cancer), 4000 additional deaths might ultimately occur. Since there is no indication that these deaths are likely, and since “prediction” of deaths by adding up of thousands of small individual radiation doses has been repeatedly forbidden as scientifically unsound, the suggested 4000 deaths has not been widely accepted.

Greenpeace’s Fear Machine

Summary:

Art Horn, writing at the Energy Tribune, calls our attention to a Greenpeace document titled The Climate Time Bomb. It was written 17 years ago – in 1994 – but it may as well have been yesterday.
The dramatic language, the glass-is-always-half-empty perspective on the world, the blind faith in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – it’s all there.

Excerpt:

One of the more distressing parts of that 1994 Greenpeace report is the section on human health. It’s important to remember that the IPCC’s first health chapter didn’t appear until 1995. It was so badly botched that Paul Reiter, who has devoted his entire professional life to the study of diseases spread by mosquitoes – including malaria – later described it as “amateurish.”Nevertheless, in 1994 Greenpeace just knew that climate change would lead to more disease. Its report includes a closeup photo of a person with a large open sore on their face, and declares that: 

Our health is threatened by climate change. Malaria, asthma, encephalitis, tuberculosis, leprosy, dengue fever and measles are all expected to become more common.

How does Greepeace know this?

• because Australian officials “believe hotter summer temperatures may be contributing” to an increase in malaria
• because US researchers think the discovery of a new strain of mosquito suggests that these mosquitoes “may spread rapidly in a global warming world” 
• because a UK government report “suggests that malaria and other tropical diseases, and even bubonic plague, could be reintroduced to the UK as a result of global warming.

This is all that Greenpeace requires. Beliefs and suggestions – nothing more. Greenpeace is happy to take mere possibilities and translate them into the confident statement that Our health is threatened by climate change. It feels no shame in adding a lurid photograph which, one supposes, is intended to imply that we’re all fated to become disfigured if we don’t get with the Greenpeace program.

Nuclear risk management - Testimony by John D. Boice

Source

Testimony on Nuclear Energy Risk Management after Fukushima, May 13, 2011

John D. Boice, Jr., Sc.D.
Professor of Radiation Epidemiology
Department of Medicine
Vanderbilt University

United State House of Representatives
Committee on Science, Space and Technology
Subcommittees on Energy & Environment and Investigations and Oversight

Washington, DC
May 13, 2011

Testimony for the Record

Good morning, Mr. Chairmen, ranking Members, and Members of the Subcommittee. I am pleased to discuss the possible health implications of radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident in Japan. Just a few days before the natural disasters struck on March 11, 2011, I was in Hiroshima, Japan as a member of the Radiation Effects Research Foundation's Science Council, reviewing the study of atomic bomb survivors. I would like to begin by expressing my heartfelt sympathy for the families of the tens of thousands who lost their lives as a result of the tsunami and earthquake and for the hundreds of thousands who have been displaced from their homes and livelihoods. The health consequences associated with the radiation exposures emanating from the Fukushima Daiichi plant pale in comparison.

As background, I am a radiation epidemiologist and Professor in the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University and Scientific Director of the International Epidemiology Institute. I have spent my career studying human populations exposed to radiation, including Chernobyl clean-up workers, patients receiving diagnostic and therapeutic radiation, underground miners exposed to radon, nuclear energy workers, atomic veterans, persons living in areas of high background radiation and U.S. populations living near nuclear power plants and other facilities. I am also a commissioner of the International Commission on Radiological Protection, an emeritus member of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, a U.S. delegate to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, and a member of the Congressionally-mandated Veterans Advisory Board on Dose Reconstruction.

My remarks will cover five areas:

• Fukushima is not Chernobyl.
• The health consequences for Japanese workers and public appear to be minor.
• The health consequences for United States citizens are negligible to nonexistent.
• We live in a radioactive world.
• There is a pressing need to learn more about the health consequences of radiation in humans when exposures are spread over time at low levels and not received briefly at high doses such as in atomic bomb survivors.

Fukushima is not Chernobyl
The Chernobyl accident on April 26, 1986, resulted in massive radiation exposures, both to the emergency workers putting out the ensuing fire and to the environment. There was no containment vessel and after the explosion a fire burned for ten days and spewed radioactive particles continuously into the environment. The emergency workers, the first responders and fire fighters, received so much radiation that 28 of them died of acute radiation sickness within a few months of exposure. Those who survived developed cataracts at a high rate and several subsequently died of myelodysplastic disorders. Radioactive iodines were deposited on large areas throughout the Ukraine, Belarus and Russian Federation and were ingested by cows who gave milk that was drunk by children, and an epidemic of thyroid cancer ensued beginning about five years after the accident. Over 520,000 recovery workers were sent to clean up the environment and build the so-called sarcophagus to contain the damaged nuclear reactor. To date there is little conclusive evidence for adverse health effects associated with radiation received during these clean-up operations. There have, however, been indications of severe psychological stress and increased rates of suicide.

In contrast, while the radiation releases from Fukushima are estimated to be up to 10% of that from Chernobyl, there appears to be substantially less worker and public exposure. The Japanese authorities relaxed the allowable annual limit of worker exposure from 2 to 25 rem for this emergency situation, but only about 21 workers received more than 10 rem and only two workers received between 20 and 25 rem. These levels are far below the hundreds of rem needed to cause acute radiation sickness. Those workers who experienced levels over 10 rem to their entire body, however, have an increased lifetime risk of developing cancer of about 1-2% over the expected normal lifetime rate of about 42%. There were reports of high radiation fields in the vicinity of the damaged reactors and spent fuel storage ponds and with the contaminated water, but apparently the Japanese authorities rotated workers in such a way that cumulative exposures to individuals were minimized. Three workers received beta particle exposures to their legs from an estimated 200-300 rem to the skin, but the health consequences of these localized exposures were minimal and resulted in only a reddening of the skin.

Exposure to the public was minimal in large part because of the prevailing winds and the quick action taken by the Japanese authorities. The prevailing winds were generally to the east and over the ocean and thus did not result in meaningful radiation exposures to the Japanese public. In contrast to the circumstances around Chernobyl where the authorities failed to alert or evacuate the surrounding populations until several days had passed, the Japanese government quickly evacuated persons living within 20 km of the Fukushima Daiichi plant and recommended that those living within 30 km stay indoors to minimize any possible exposure to radioactive releases. In addition, they immediately monitored the food and water supplies and banned the shipment of foodstuffs and milk where the radiation levels exceeded allowable standards.

These protective action measures, including the distribution of stable iodine pills (or syrup for children), minimized public doses and suggest that there will be minimal health consequences associated with any radiation exposures to the Japanese public. This is borne out in one survey of over 1,000 children who had their thyroids measured for possible uptakes of radioactive iodine. Not one child had a measurement above detectable limits. This is in contrast to children living near Chernobyl for whom large numbers had extremely high levels of radioactive iodine detected in their thyroids from drinking contaminated milk shortly after the accident.

Nonetheless, some of the prevailing winds did blow toward populated areas shortly after the accident and during the hydrogen explosions, and to the north-west in particular. Rain, snow and hail deposited radioactive particles in certain regions, including some beyond 20 km, and these areas will be a concern for remediation before allowing public access or return. The Japanese authorities are considering regular medical examinations for workers and inhabitants who received more than 10 rem. To reduce anxiety, they are considering medical check-ups for those who may have received between 2 to 10 rem. They are also grappling with important issues as to when and how to allow evacuated inhabitants to return to their homes. Childhood exposures are of particular concern and topsoil is already being removed from some school playgrounds.

Thus, while Fukushima is clearly a major reactor accident, the potential health consequences associated with radiation exposures in terms of loss of life and future cancer risk are small, particularly in contrast with those resulting from the Chernobyl accident some 25 years ago.

For completeness, the 1979 reactor accident at Three Mile Island did not release appreciable amounts of radioactive substances into the environment, and public and even worker exposures were minimal. The average dose to people in the area was only about 1 millirem, or about what would be received in three days from sources of natural background radiation to the surrounding population.

The health consequences for United States citizens are negligible to nonexistent
Fukushima is 5,000 miles away from the United States and the radiation that has been detected was substantially diluted after traveling such a long distance. The detection of trace amounts of radiation speaks more about the extreme sensitivity of our radiation detectors than about the potential health consequences from the radiation itself. In addition to EPA’s RadNet system that monitors water, milk and the atmosphere, the Department of Energy has radiation monitoring equipment that can detect minute quantities of radioactive particles from the other side of the world as part of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The tiny amounts of detected radioactive materials from Fukushima pose no threat to human health. They represent, at most, only a tiny fraction of what we receive each day from natural sources, such as the sun, the food we eat, the air we breathe and the houses we live in.

It is impressive that radiation monitors can detect levels of radioactive iodine-131 as low as 0.03 Bq/L (0.8 pCi/L) in milk in Washington State; this is the decay of one radioactive atom per second in about 33 gallons of milk. Such a level is 5,000 of times below the Derived Intervention Level set by the Food and Drug Administration to trigger concern over radionuclides in food. An infant would have to drink hundreds of gallons of milk to receive a radiation dose equivalent to a day’s worth of natural background radiation exposure. Such tiny levels of radiation are inconsequential compared with the levels we experience in daily life.

Interestingly, the radiation monitoring stations in Washington State had to detect radionuclides other than iodine-131 in order to distinguish radiation from Fukushima from that at any local hospital in the area. Most nuclear medicine departments use radioactive iodine for imaging the thyroid and to treat thyroid diseases, and patients are discharged shortly after intake and remain radioactive for several months, releasing small but detectable levels of radioactive iodine into the environment.

The trivial levels of radiation from Japan, while detectable, should not be of a concern and Americans should not take stable iodine (potassium iodide pills, KI) as a preventive measure to block the thyroid’s uptake of radioactive iodine. There are potential adverse health effects from taking KI pills and these risks have to be balanced against a nonexistent benefit.

We live in a radioactive world
To place the radiation levels from Fukushima in brief perspective, it is important to recognize that we live in a radioactive world. A banana, for example, has 10 Bq of activity, that is, 10 radioactive potassium atoms decay every second. All the foodstuffs we eat that contain potassium also contain a small amount of radioactive potassium, a primordial element with a billion year half-life. There are no concerns and no health consequences from such exposures.

We breathe radioactive radon which contributes over the year to about 210 millirem of natural background radiation. Bricks and granite contain radioactive materials that result in radiation exposures to the public (20 millirem). The Capitol Building was constructed with granite and is frequently cited as having some of the highest radiation levels in all of the United States, about 85 millirem per year. Water contains small amounts of radioactive radium, thorium and uranium, all within allowable limits.

Not only do we live in a radioactive world, our bodies are radioactive (30 millirem per year). Each second over 7,000 radioactive atoms in our bodies decay and can irradiate those sitting next to us. The atoms are largely radioactive potassium in our muscles and carbon-14 in our tissues. The amount of radiation we receive each year from medical sources (300 millirem), such as CT and medical imaging, equals the amount received from natural sources (300 millirem). International travel increases our exposure to cosmic rays and space radiation. A roundtrip from Dulles to Tokyo would result in 20 millirem. Living in Denver for a year results in 450 millirem of radiation dose, or 35% more than the U.S. average of 310 millirem from natural sources. About 2.5 million Americans (0.8% of the population) receive more than 2,000 millirem per year from natural sources.

These examples are not to minimize the health consequences of high-level exposures which are clearly demonstrable in human populations and include acute radiation sickness at very high doses in excess of 200 rem and an increase in cancer at moderate doses above about 10 rem (10,000 millirem). The examples do indicate, however, that we live in a world of low-level radiation for which the possible health consequences are of little concern. The exposures to the U.S. population from Fukushima are tiny and thousands of times below U.S. standards or guidelines where remedial action would be triggered.

What research is needed?
Although we know much about the health effects of high levels of radiation when received briefly, as was the case for atomic bomb survivors, the risk following exposures experienced gradually over time is uncertain and remains the major unanswered question in radiation epidemiology.

One untapped opportunity is to study our own U.S. radiation workers and veterans. The Low Dose Radiation Program within the Department of Energy had the foresight to initiate pilot investigations of over one million such workers and this comprehensive work should continue. Cooperating agencies include the National Cancer Institute, the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and others. The study populations include early DOE and Manhattan Project workers, atomic veterans who participated in nuclear weapons testing in the 1940s and 1950s, nuclear utility workers, medical workers and others involved in the development of radiation technologies, as well as nuclear navy personnel.

Such a large study in the United States is critically important to understand scientifically the health consequences of low-dose radiation experienced over time and is directly relevant to the setting of protection standards for workers and the public; the assessment of possible risks from enhanced medical technologies such as CT and nuclear medicine imaging; the expansion of nuclear power; the handling of nuclear waste; the compensation of workers with prior exposures to radiation; and even the possible consequences of the radiation released from reactor accidents such as at Fukushima. To date, no direct study of these issues has been large enough to provide convincing answers and extrapolations from the atomic bomb exposures in 1945 have to be relied upon.

Summary
Fortunately, the health consequences from the radiation releases from the Fukushima Daiichi power plant appear to be minimal and are of little importance with regard to the U.S. public. The Japanese authorities acted quickly to evacuate over 200,000 inhabitants living near the damaged reactors; they monitored food and water and took rapid action to ban foodstuffs with increased radiation levels; they distributed stable iodine pills and syrup; and they made measurements on over 175,000 persons. The lasting effects upon the Japanese population will most likely be psychological with increased occurrence of stress-related mental disorders and depression associated not necessarily with the concern about reactor radiation, but with the horrific loss of life and disruption caused by the tsunami and earthquake. There is a need for better public understanding and better communications on the health effects of radiation exposures. Finally, there is now the opportunity in the United States to learn directly about low-dose, long-term radiation health effects by studying our workers and veterans.
Thank you for this opportunity to testify. I welcome any questions that you may have.

Relevant References
Boice JD Jr. Lauriston S. Taylor lecture: radiation epidemiology--the golden age and future challenges. Health Physics 100(1):59-76, 2011.

Christodouleas JP, Forrest RD, Ainsley CG, Tochner Z, Hahn SM, Glatstein E. Short-Term and Long-Term Health Risks of Nuclear-Power-Plant Accidents. New England Journal of Medicine, April 20, 2011.

Idaho National Laboratory. Oversight Program: Guide to Radiation Doses and Limits. [http://www.deq.idaho.gov/inl_oversight/radiation/radiation_guide.cfm]

International Atomic Energy Agency. Fukushima Nuclear Accident Update Log
[http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html]

National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, NCRP Report No. 160, Ionizing Radiation Exposure of the Population of the United States, March 2009.

Report of the President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, Washington, D.C. (The Kemeny Commission Report), October 1979.

Smith J. A long shadow over Fukushima. Nature, April 5, 2011.

UNSCEAR. United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. Sources and Effects of Ionizing Radiation, UNSCEAR 2008 Report to the General Assembly, with Scientific Annexes, Volume II, Annex D, health Effects due to Radiation from the Chernobyl Accident (United Nations Publications, New York), 2011.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. [http://www.lrb.usace.army.mil/fusrap/docs/fusrap-fs-uranium-2008-09.pdf]

Wakeford R. And now, Fukushima (editorial). Journal of Radiological Protection (in press).                  

Low level radiation and Linear no threshold (LNT) theory. We should revisit our regulation.

We should revisit our exposure regulations because our regulatory history is founded on a deception.

Some background first.
What is radiation? According to wikipedia:

In physics, radiation is a process in which energetic particles or energy or waves travel through a medium or space. There are two distinct types of radiation; ionizing and non-ionizing. The word radiation is commonly used in reference to ionizing radiation only (i.e., having sufficient energy to ionize an atom), but it may also refer to non-ionizing radiation (e.g., radio waves, heat or visible light).

So what concerns this article will be about ionizing radiation. Again from wikipedia:

Ionizing (or ionising) radiation is radiation with sufficient energy to remove an electron from an atom or molecule. This ionization produces free radicals, atoms or molecules containing unpaired electrons, which tend to be especially chemically reactive.

Low level radiation.
We know for sure that high level radiation will kill and we know fore sure that low level radiation does not. High level radiation from a nuclear bomb or exposure to high level of radioactivity from a close source of radiation will kill you from anywhere from an instant to a few days, depending on the amount you receive.

The not so clear debate is with low level radiation. Some argue that there is no safe limit where radiation is safe. Those are the advocate of the Linear no threshold theory or LNT.

There is another school of thought that understand that low level radiation under a certain level is safe and even goes further to say that it can also be beneficial. This is called Hormesis. The theory say:

Low levels radiation, activate the body's DNA repair mechanisms, causing higher levels of cellular DNA-repair proteins to be present in the body, improving the body's ability to repair DNA damage.

Sources of radiation in our day to day life
Radiation is everywhere. From the beginning of the earth to now, we are surrounded in radiation 24 hours per day. Here's the distribution of radiation we absorb every day for different sources.

Source of the information, copy here.

We even have natural radioactivity inside our body in the form of Pottassium-40, from wikipedia:

Potassium-40 is the largest source of natural radioactivity in animals and humans. An adult human body contains about 160 grams of potassium, hence about 0.000117 x 160 = 0.0187 grams of 40K; whose decay produces about 5,000 disintegrations per second (becquerels) continuously throughout the life of the body.

Basic conclusion:
So we are ourselves radioactive and we live in a natural environment immersed in radio-activity.  looking only at those obvious natural sources, we could conclude that humans and animals evolved with radioactivity and "learned" to adapt to it.  We could say that radioactivity is helping our immune system to better cope with external influence and keep our body functioning. We could also conclude that without a minimum level of radioactivity, we would be missing the benefits of keeping the immune system "in shape" and have negative consequences from it.  The same way that to be healthy we need to exercise, our immune system need the exercise provided by this low level radiation.

What level of radiation is OK?
I documented in August 2011 that within a certain range, there is a bio positive impact from radiation and outside that range, the impact is negative, since the immune system is either "sleeping" or overwhelmed.

From the conclusion we saw in the previous sections, this graph seems logical. We live in a radioactive environment, therefore we are between point 2 and 5 of this graph, but according to my investigation, we are closer to point 2 than point 4 (optimum), thus we do not have enough radiation to have the full "benefit" of it.  There are events that happened in the past, where we saw that higher than the "normal - closer to point2" level of radiation, where beneficial.

1984 - Taiwan cobalt-contaminated steel

An extraordinary incident occurred 20 years ago in Taiwan. Recycled steel, accidentally contaminated with cobalt-60 (half-life: 5.3 y), was formed into construction steel for more than 180 buildings, which 10,000 persons occupied for 9 to 20 years. They unknowingly received radiation doses that averaged 0.4 Sv—a “collective dose” of 4,000 person-Sv

Studies 20 years later showed that the cancer rates of this population was lower than the unexposed population in the same region.

This shows that this population, exposed to higher level of radiation, but within a limit that the immune system could cope with, got a long term benefit of having an immune system more in "shape" and able to kill off cancer cells as they grew old.

Today's regulation on low level nuclear radiation.
We now have evidence that the "linear no threshold" (LNT) of low level radiation as no scientific proof and all regulation that we have now are not based on sound science.

Here's a copy of an article published in Science News on Sept 20, 2011. Highlights added

No Safe Level of Radiation Exposure? Researcher Points to Suppression of Evidence On Radiation Effects by Nobel Laureate:

University of Massachusetts Amherst environmental toxicologist Edward Calabrese, whose career research shows that low doses of some chemicals and radiation are benign or even helpful, says he has uncovered evidence that one of the fathers of radiation genetics, Nobel Prize winner Hermann Muller, knowingly lied when he claimed in 1946 that there is no safe level of radiation exposure.

Calabrese's interpretation of this history is supported by letters and other materials he has retrieved, many from formerly classified files. He published key excerpts this month in Archives of Toxicology and Environmental and Molecular Mutagenesis.

Muller was awarded the 1946 Nobel Prize in medicine for his discovery that X-rays induce genetic mutations. This helped him call attention to his long-time concern over the dangers of atomic testing. Muller's intentions were good, Calabrese points out, but his decision not to mention key scientific evidence against his position has had a far-reaching impact on our approach to regulating radiation and chemical exposure. 

Calabrese uncovered correspondence from November 1946 between Muller and Curt Stern at the University of Rochester about a major experiment that had recently evaluated fruit fly germ cell mutations in Stern's laboratory. It failed to support the linear dose-response model at low exposure levels, but in Muller's speech in Oslo a few weeks later he insisted there was "no escape from the conclusion that there is no threshold." To Calabrese, this amounts to deliberate concealment and he says Stern raised no objection. 

Calabrese adds, "This isn't an academic debate, it's really practical, because all of our rules about chemical and low-level radiation are based on the premises that Muller and the National Academy of Sciences' (NAS) committee adopted at that time. Now, after all these years, it's very hard when people have been frightened to death by this dogma to persuade them that we don't need to be scared by certain low-dose exposures." 

Within a year after Muller and his group persuaded the NAS to accept the linear model for gonadal mutations, the practice was extrapolated to somatic cells and cancer. Twenty years later, NAS adopted the linear approach for chemicals. Soon thereafter, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it would use the linear model for risk assessment, Calabrese points out. 

Some can accept that even the most distinguished scientists have human failings, he acknowledges. But his view is that "the regulatory research community needs to hear about this. The implications of my findings are that we should revisit our exposure regulations because our regulatory history is founded on a deception. We have seen literally hundreds of thousands of cleanup decisions based on a model that was fraudulently derived. I think we should probably have drastically different exposure standards today, and far less fear."
Calabrese believes, "The die was cast by Muller and regulations adopted since then have gone unchallenged. I think he got his beliefs and his science confused, and he couldn't admit that the science was unresolved. So he went ahead and expressed an opinion about how to handle the public health situation." 

Geneticists in the 1950s came to embrace the "linear dose-response model" of risk because at the high exposures they tested, there was no level below which DNA damage did not occur. They felt medical doctors didn't grasp how significant were the dangers. As the smartest and brightest, Muller anticipated the risk of atmospheric atomic testing and became passionately committed to protecting society, Calabrese explains. 

Muller and Curt Stern had done many of the key experiments. Muller himself served on the NAS's Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation (BEAR) committee, through which the linear dose-response approach to risk assessment became firmly entrenched. The two successfully suppressed last-minute evidence from the fruit fly experiment conducted in Stern's lab by postdoctoral researcher Ernst Caspari, and the rest is history, Calabrese says. It marked the "transformation of a threshold-guided risk assessment to one now centered on a linear dose-response." 

"To me this all raises the question, what happens when a scientific field lies to the public, to federal agencies and the president? It's a very scary situation that the radiation genetics community in the 1950s assumed that something was correct without requiring the necessary documentation to support it," the UMass Amherst toxicologist says.
Stern's group published a paper in 1947 not long after Muller's Nobel Prize acceptance speech in which they tried to discredit their own study, further evidence of a deliberate cover-up, Calabrese says. "It's been hidden in the bowels of the Atomic Energy Commission for decades until I found it. They revised it to remove the one sentence suggesting this experiment might provide evidence for the threshold model." 

"One could argue that Muller single-handedly undermined above-ground atomic testing, which is a good thing," Calabrese says. "But after uncovering this lie, I'm starting to contemplate what society would have looked like if the regulatory community had felt free to use a threshold model. Members of that 1956 NAS BEAR committee didn't see the domino effect of their actions on our society. Muller's impact on the world of today is almost incalculable. He couldn't have imagined it. But we shouldn't have to live with it."

What are the impact of this regulation, not based on real impact of low does radiation?
The impacts are too numerous to count, but some come to mind.

• Fukushima nuclear plant fear and exclusion zone
• Many thousands have been forced out of their homes in the exclusion zones.  This could probably be avoided. Here's a report on this situation.
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• Nuclear power plants regulations that cost billions and slow down projects
• Today, we impose so many regulations on nuclear power that in the end, projects are abandoned or take 15 years to complete and cost billions more. 
• Today's coal plants release more radio activity than nuclear power!
• Going to the doctor for an x-ray, will expose you to higher doses of radiation than working in a nuclear power plant for a year.
• Countries that shutdown nuclear power plants or stop new projects based on fear alone
• We see that now with Germany, Japan and other countries.
• The impact is that they will burn more fossil fuels and have a greater impact on the environment.
• Possible benefits of low radiation preventive therapy that could save millions from cancers.
• We now see some cancer researchers using low does, whole body exposure to boast the immune system before a radio therapy treatments.  This help the body recover faster and give better chances to the patients.

The list goes on, like Calabrese said:

Muller's impact on the world of today is almost incalculable

Related links and documents

• Take Two Rads And Call Me In The Morning
• Radiation's bad rep a beat-up, controversial new research claims
• Many LNT and other nuclear related documents