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Are We Under-exposed to Radiation? Michael Arnold Glueck, M.D., and Robert J. Cihak, M.D., The Medicine Men Everyone's aware of overexposure to radiation, but can someone be underexposed? In a word, yes. A radiation shortage afflicts most of the human race. In his well-documented and entertaining book "Under-Exposed: What If Radiation Is Actually Good for You?" engineer Ed Hiserodt accurately describes this pandemic. In round numbers, Americans absorb an average of about 0.3 rads worth of "background" radiation every year from entirely natural sources such as cosmic rays and the naturally occurring potassium-40 in our bodies. For clarification, a rad is one measure or absorbed radiation, and in humans is essentially the same as a rem, a centisievert (cSv) or a centiGray (cGy) so I'll just use rads to minimize further confusion. Governments and the media almost routinely overreact to the word "radiation." For example, during the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident in the former Soviet Union, the Soviet Army evacuated people from their homes if the radiation level exceeded a rate equivalent to 0.5 rads per year. Yet if that level triggered evacuation elsewhere, Grand Central Terminal in New York City would be closed because of its 0.525 rads radiation level. Traveling to or living on the Colorado plateau, at 0.6 rads, would be illegal. Kerala, India, (1.3 rads) would be a ghost town. And, the popular Guarapari Beach in Brazil, at over 26 rads, would be off-limits to sunbathers and swimmers alike. The response to Three Mile Island nuclear power reactor accident is another example. The miniscule amount of radiation from the accident itself injured no one. Scary media and political hype did cause one person to die in an auto accident while fleeing from the area. The discredited linear no-threshold hypothesis (LNT) of radiation interaction with living things causes some of this overreaction to radiation. According to this hypothesis, ionizing radiation causes irreparable damage to cells every time a single radiation event occurs in living beings; over time, this damage would add up and cause cancer and other problems. Story Continues Below
This would be like a chisel damaging a stone pillar by knocking one small chip off at a time. Eventually, with enough tiny chips knocked off, the stone pillar would break and fall. Scientists long ago found that tiny doses of anything don't hurt living things. Living beings heal damage until they're overwhelmed with large doses. If the dose is too large, vitamins, water, radiation, food and almost everything are toxic. A single chemical molecule, atom, radiation photon, or bacterium does nothing to a living organism. Not even 10 or 100. From the studies and reports I've seen, it takes thousands and thousands to evoke any response at all. Over 400 years ago, the alchemist Paracelsus did get at least one thing right: "The dose makes the poison." Little doses over time don't add up or accumulate; living organisms deal with the little doses by neutralizing or excreting the doses and healing sub-microscopic changes. If aspirin had accumulated in my body over time, I'd be dead by now. I take one-quarter of an aspirin tablet every day to reduce the likelihood I'll have a heart attack or stroke. If I get a headache, I take two. But if I took 100 at a time, they'd kill me. Yet one interpretation of the linear no-threshold hypothesis (LNT) implies that every dose of aspirin does irreparable damage. This ignores the fact that my body flushes out small doses aspirin and heals any aspirin damage. In the same way, the human body heals small changes induced in body cells by radiation or other causes. For example, each cell in your body suffers over 100,000 changes in its DNA every day. Almost all of these changes are due to normal metabolic cellular activity. And the body heals almost all. Scientific advances have disproved the linear no-threshold hypothesis (LNT). But the bad idea lives on in the minds of people who are ignorant of the facts or use it to incite fear for their own personal agenda, such as selling radon-detection equipment, making a good living in the radiation-protection industry, or pushing an ideological agenda. In contrast to public and media misperceptions, more ionizing radiation would be good for us. The optimal dose is about 10 rads/year, more than 20 times our current average dose, according to biochemist T. D. Luckey, Emeritus Professor and Biochemistry Department Chairman at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine. A detailed scientific and statistical analysis of 70,000 American shipyard workers by researchers at Johns Hopkins University tends to confirm Luckey's conclusion. This Nuclear Shipyard Workers Study measured the extra radiation doses absorbed by workers during their work on nuclear and conventionally powered ships. Compared with those not getting any extra radiation from their work, workers receiving more than 0.5 rads of extra radiation suffered 24 percent fewer deaths plus other benefits. I highly recommend Hiserodt's book for an excellent read and further information on many additional topics. For a lot more detail and reference to additional primary scientific sources see Radiation, Science and Health, Inc., (RSH) http://www.radscihealth.org/RSH/index.html. Related article: http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/3/31/163126.shtml Editor's Note: Robert J. Cihak wrote this week's column.
Robert J. Cihak, M.D., is a senior fellow and board member of the Discovery Institute and a Contributing Editor of the Data Document published only by Radiation, Science and Health, Inc., an international non-profit organization http://www.radscihealth.org/RSH/index.html. Michael Arnold Glueck, M.D., comments on medical-legal issues and is a visiting fellow in economics and citizenship at the International Trade Education Foundation of the Washington International Trade Council.
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