“Reassurances"
Regarding comparisons of radiation received on coast to coast airplane flights to the amount we are now getting environmentally, a little further thought gives a not very encouraging picture. Even if the science behind the comparison is accurate, what it is really being said is that, externally, we are now exposed to (at least) that amount of radiation on a permanent basis, not just for the duration of an air trip. And internally the situation is worse. Radioactive particles taken in by breathing, eating, and drinking are, as Helen Caldicott calls them, “internal emitters.” The meaning of that phrase ought to be pretty clear to everyone. As has been pointed out elsewhere, these isotopes accumulate in various parts of the body. The real question is not whether all this is going to be bad. The real question is how bad it is going to be. “Reassurances” like the airplane analogy are pathetic attempts to minimize the p.r. damage to the nuclear industry, even more pathetic because they probably work.
I find most reassurances...
I find most reassurances to be empty, since I don't believe that we have all the facts to make informed decisions. We are constantly being informed, after the fact, of bad data, wrt to the fukushima details.
http://enenews.com/daily-radioactive-release-from-fukushima-is-150-times...
LisaT
deformed children generations later
Here are some pictures of how radiation exposure years after chernobyl
affected the next generation. If these children were born years after the disaster, is this what low dose half life does to embryos?
These are from the Chernobyl Children's
Trust. Warning, they are very difficlut to look at.
http://www.chernobylchildrenstrust.ie/photos/
http://doctorapsley.com/Radia
http://doctorapsley.com/RadiationTherapy.aspx
Helen Caldicott is a well
Helen Caldicott is a well established anti-nuclear activist. I wouldn't trust her for unbiased information any more than I would trust Tepco.
If you go and read the FAQ and then read the BEIR VII study that BRAWM's analysis is based on, it will answer your questions as to how the dose is taken into account for ingested radionuclides.
This same argument comes up at least every day, and it's getting tiring becuase there is no truth to it.
If you would like to refute the BEIR VII study, please cite your peer reviewed study as proof.
Helen Caldicott is well established and well educated ...
What are the PRO-nuclear activist touting these days? ... will they even sign their names here? ... The anonymous posters here who refute Dr. Caldicott, so easily, are simply ANONYMOUS posters on an anonymous forum ... nothing more ... unlettered, uneducated, and hiding even their NAME from view ... carrying ZERO weight in any conversation ....
If you want to refute Dr. Caldicott please challenge yourself to be as open about who you are as she is about herself ... she has nothing to hide ... I challenge you to sign your names....
Ad-homonym attack.
Ad-homonym attack.
cha ching ...
Challenging any anonymous poster to be honest and post their name is certainly not a "ad-homonym attack." Admittedly, many of us reading here can't claim any knowledge in the field of nuclear engineering. However, anyone one of us can easily recognize people(on this site and in other forums)who are willing to put their entire careers on the line to educate the public on this subject. Others who criticize their life's work and hide behind their anonymity are empty suits.
expert opinions
Just because an expert has an opinion or interest in a subject
does not make what they say untrue. If that were the case,
a jury would never reach a verdicts. You get to decide
their credibility.
low risk
Well the beir study is not saying there's no risk to low exposure .As stated "The report concludes that the preponderance of information indicates that there will be some risk, even at low doses, although the risk is small."
So there it is opinions that brawn is in on a conspiracy is laughable be informed...
I never said the risk was
I never said the risk was zero, and simply living on Earth carries risk of cancer from radiation all around us.
Your point was that consuming the radionuclide is worse than receiving whole body radiation. And why it's false is because the biological effects of the dose are taken into account and then EXPRESSED as a whole body measurement.
As it says in the FAQ if you would like to read more.
I agree with u
Take a look at this any one feel free to discredit with proper links Ty...
http://investmentwatchblog.com/i-found-this-paper-insightful-comparing-j...
EPA has some terrific
EPA has some terrific information including this on cesium...
How do people come in contact with cesium-137?
Everyone is exposed to very small amounts of cesium-137 in soil and water as a result of atmospheric fallout. In the Northern Hemisphere, the average annual dose from exposure to cesium-137 associated with atmospheric fallout is less than 1 mrem; this dose continues to diminish every year as cesium-137 decays.
People may also be exposed from contaminated sites:
Walking on cesium-137 contaminated soil could result in external exposure to gamma radiation. Leaving the contaminated area would prevent additional exposure.
Coming in contact with waste materials at contaminated sites could also result in external exposure to gamma radiation. Leaving the area would also end the exposure.
If cesium-137 contaminated soil becomes air-borne as dust, breathing the dust would result in internal exposure. Because the radiation emitting material is then in the body, leaving the site would not end the exposure.
Drinking cesium-137 contaminated water, would also place the cesium-137 inside the body, where it would expose living tissue to gamma and beta radiation.
People may also unknowingly handle a strong industrial source of cesium-137. For example, certain moisture gauges contain cesium-137 sources.
And the biological halflife
And the biological halflife of Cesium is 70 days. Meaning the body rids itself of Cesium over time.
If exposure to significant amounts of Cesoum is suspected, there are chellating treatments to remove it from the body.
But, the original point of this thread is that BRAWM's measurements are misleading because of internal/external doses, and this is still false.
Chelation
Please explain your chealation therapy to remove cesium with some data thanks ...
Look up Prussian Blue
Look up Prussian Blue
Our measurements are not
Our measurements are not misleading, they are in fact the gold standard in which we all make interpretation. Hard measurements are the closest thing we have to actual truth. Everything else is communicated through filters which will have bias in some way or another. We have provided our interpretations of risk to health in the form of exposure context of whole body EFFECTIVE dose. This effective dose calculation takes into account the internal accumulation to all internal organs. Please read our FAQ...let me say it again,...please read our FAQ. This is a valid method for equalizing the risk of health effects due to radiation exposure in different pathways.
One may disagree with our interpretation and this happens in science all of the time. The response to this is to scientifically undermine our assumptions and methods by providing references that counter our interpretation. In this case, please provide some article (peer-reviewed preferably) that states that the use of dose correction factors for various internal and external doses do not relate to actual health effect risk. Mind you, our methods follow virtually thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles from around the world in the past 30 years that show just the contrary. Good Luck!
Low dose phenomena?
What's your opinion on low dose phenomena, and further the increased detection of it in children?
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0014195
Thank you :)
Conclusion: "These data
Conclusion: "These data indicate that hSC might not be susceptible to damaging effects of RIBE signaling compared to differentiated adult human somatic cells as shown previously. This finding could have profound implications in a field of radiation biology/oncology, in evaluating radiation risk of IR exposures, and for the safety and efficacy of hSC regenerative-based therapies."
My interpretation: This study shows, at least in the conditions of the experiment, that human stem cells (hSC) are not susceptible to damaging effects of radiation-induced bystander effect (RIBE). This is a very niche study and hard to understand in the context of all low-dose damage mechanisms. In other words, I'm not sure what the impact of RIBE to hSC is in the cumulative picture.
Good article, I am curious
Good article, I am curious to see what the BRAWN response will be.
Effective Dose
Dr. Chivers,
You mentioned effective dose.
In this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS0UxXDNs4w
which is discussing the TSA radiation body scanners, Dr. Peter Rez, Professor of Physics at Arizona State University, (at about 2:00) discusses effective dose and says he doesn't personally like effective dose.
I know the video is discussing body scanners and not radionuclides, but it made me curious about “effective” dose, and I found this paper by D.J. Brenner PhD, called:
“Effective dose: a flawed concept that could and should be replaced.”
www.columbia.edu/~djb3/papers/bjr3.pdf
I guess what I'm asking is...is effective dose a standard one can trust when calculating damage from radiation from Japan.
Thank you.
I'm not really part of this
I'm not really part of this scientific debate mainly because I am, as the BRAWM team is, only utilizing this standard method of using effective doses to compare health effects. I took a quick glance at the Brenner paper and I tend to agree with his attacks on effective dose usage and would welcome an improvement on the method along the lines he suggests:
(I am summarizing)
1. Decouple the cancer risk from the hereditary risk. Effective dose combines the two and these are inherently different because the hereditary risk can be passed on and is much smaller than the immediate cancer risk.
2. Include age and gender dependence. At this time, effective dose does not take into effect sensitivity to risk in special groups such as young children and women (breast) and men (prostate).
3. The new quantity should be easily interpretable, so that it is less prone to misapplication. Very often, the units of effective dose, which is Sieverts, can be interchangeable with other forms of dose weighting and thus prone to misapplication.
This would add specificity to the effective dose method that by and large would be an improvement. However, the author does not attack the validity of the use of effective dose, only that one could find fault within certain sectors of the population which may be more or less sensitive to the exposure than the "reference man" approach. I think this is a very reasonable commentary.
The fact that...
"effective dose does not take into effect sensitivity to risk in special groups such as young children and women" is exactly why it's a little difficult to feel completely reassured that children in utero right now aren't being disproportionately impacted by the exposure, particularly since there's plenty of evidence showing heightened radiosensitivity during weeks 8-15.
Hope that there are professors/scientists looking at health outcomes (particularly leukemia and thyroid cancer) for those born in the next 1-2 years -- really the only way we'll know whether or not the public should be concerned by the fallout we've gotten...the studies on children in Europe post-Chernobyl show increased cancer rates, lower IQ, etc at low levels that were supposedly "safe"/not harmful.
WH
DIL Report
I think one only needs to look at the rate of cancer mortality in the US to see that whether it is radiation or something else, our health is being greatly effected by what is in the environment. I found the cancer mortality rate of 19% listed in the DIL report: http://www.fda.gov/downloads/MedicalDevices/DeviceRegulationandGuidance/...
"For comparison, the estimate of the normal lifetime total cancer mortality in the United States for the general population, not associated with additional radiation dose from ingestion of contaminated
food from an accident, is 0.19 or approximately 1 in 5 (CIRRPC 1992)."
The rate for 2010 is 23% according to the CDC.
So in just 20 years the rate has increased 4%. Of course, there is no way to prove what is causing this increase in cancer mortality as the use of pesicides and other harmful chemicals has increased during the same years. It will be very interesting to see if in the next 20 years, the rate of this increase accelerates.
I would wager that diet and
I would wager that diet and exercise have more to do with cancer rates than radiation or pesticides.
The rates of obesity in this country is staggering and fueled by HFCS and a sedentary lifestyle.
Ignorant posts based on odd generalizations...
I'd be happy to sit down with you and relate to you the biographies of the more than ten close friends and family relatives of our generation that my wife and I have known - on both coasts -- who developed cancer in their forties. As I related in another post, NONE OF THESE INDIVIDUALS EVER SMOKED CIGARETTES AT ANY TIME IN THEIR LIVES, and HALF OF THEM DIED BEFORE THEY TURNED FIFTY.
And...
...when I think of the top of my head, I CANNOT THINK OF A SINGLE ONE WHO WAS NOT THIN. So please keep your ignorant generalizations about weight being a factor to yourself as you actually have the arrogance to suggest that Americans sit on their butts and "give themselves cancer". I'm sure you are also an apologist for the horrific international corporations that have in the past, are now, and in the future will continue to kill innocent citizens as long as they can profit on the process.
Poor Lorraine was the most recent to die, and a wonderful spirit -- an absolute angel - who actually painted a series of more than eighty angels that were featured in a hospital gallery and in stories in local Los Angeles newspapers after her death. She painted these angels while in the most incredible pain, despite the heavy pain killers, and I watched her die in pain. She grew up in Wales and lived a holistic life of safe organic food, exercise and meditation, and who kept her body quite trim. Her husband had been brought over by Disney from the UK to teach anatomy and provide concept development on a number of their feature films. She developed cancer just a few years after coming to the U.S. and died at age fifty leaving a ten year old daughter and a teenage son.
I have already related the story of my older brother who died two years after Chernobyl at age 41 leaving a wife and two young children with massive tumors throughout his body in his lungs, glands, liver and pancreas.
As I stated in the other post, there is not a single person who can prove that the cumulative effect of radioactive isotopes from Hiroshima; Nagasaki; the fifty or so above-ground tests performed by the U.S. military in Nevada and the South Pacific; Chernobyl, Three-Mile-Island, etc. could not have contributed to their cancers, along with all of the other filthy toxins, carcinogens etc. we allow corporations to play with in this country, including Boeing at the Santa Susanna Field Lab, etc. And now, we have the destruction of aquifers taking place via more than 150 unnamed toxic chemicals being used in violation of both the Clean Air and Water Acts by frack-drilling for natural gas.
Keep on blaming the largely under-informed general public, but remember that to be a financial or instrumental part of these industries fully KNOWING what is going on is to be a genocidal criminal, in my opinion.
I would generally disagree with this
I know too many people that "eat right" and exercise that get cancers, and also cancers of an aggressive form. Have you walked into an oncologist's office lately, or an infusion room? I don't see obese people overrepresented there. I do see more younger folks than I would have expected....
Now, if you want to talk about the adulteration of our food supply and how that affects our nutrition, I will definitely agree with that.
I think it's a cumulative effect. You throw in immune system damaged by over-vaccination, adulteration of our food sources and just about everything that we come into contact with, we don't have the stability of health to tackle the other assualts.
This idea of a little bit of radiation being good for a person, since it stimulates immune cells to repair. Well, that really only works in a person that is health and has healthy repair systems. I'm willing to bet that this doesn't describe the majority people that surround me, for reasons including those I mentioned above. I would expect that this doesn't include the majority of people, since many folks can't deal with the background stuff that we already have around us.
LisaT
What causes cancer?
While bad diet and lack of exercise might be responsible for heart disease and diabetes, I think most doctors would not think of these things as being a cause for cancer. Cancer is understood to be a genetic mutation that is not corrected by the body's immune system resulting in growths that damage one's body in it's normal functions.
While a healthy person can withstand a certain amount of these mutations and their immune system will correct them, one has to think that if we are constantly bombarded by chemicals and radioactive substances (that cause mutations), our body's immune system would eventually be unable to cope.
That is why the risk of developing cancer increases with age - as we age, our immune system becomes weaker ( a natural part of aging), and we are unable to cope with the environmental hazards that exist out there in our food, water, and air.
Noone knows what the limit is. While studies have been done, there is no way to determine how the combined effect of everything we encounter in our lives (chemicals and radiation) will effect our health. We are as others have commented, guinea pigs.
The only problem with all of it is that it will be impossible to turn back and clean up the earth once we have discovered the limit. It will be too late. And we won't be able to find another place to live. This must be how the Japanese must feel who will not be returning to their homes.
One thing I'm certain of...
...It's time for the United States to step up and lead the world with an inspirational / aspirational, "we choose to go to the Moon"-style commitment to develop a cure for cancer by 2020. IF we are to have anything like "universal health care" in this country, this should be THE top priority of such an endeavor. I would gladly pay higher taxes for such a firm commitment to the research, development and deployment of universally effective cancer treatments.
Rick.
I would not bet against you
I would not bet against you on that statement.
shill
shill