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Chronic Low-Level Radiation Good for Us? Taiwan Housing Accident Suggests So.
- scythe 17y agoI'm assuming the effects on humans are different for different types of radiation and different types of exposure; as I recall, lung cancer deaths are significantly higher in regions where radon (an alpha-emitter) emissions from granite are above average.
- behe101 17y agoHere's the original paper: http://www.jpands.org/vol9no1/chen.pdf http://www.jpands.org/vol9no1/chen.pdf
- eggoa 17y agoThis journal seems to have a definite political agenda. http://neurodiversity.com/weblog/article/91/strange-bedfellows http://neurodiversity.com/weblog/article/91/strange-bedfello...
- NathanKP 17y agoI really don't see how low-level radiation can be good for us. If it is then cell phones should also prevent brain cancer. http://www.globalchange.com/radiation.htm http://www.globalchange.com/radiation.htm I agree with eggoa who said that this article must have a political agenda.
- slackerIII 17y ago"Radiation" means a lot of different things. Decay of nuclear materials != cell phone emissions.
- teuobk 17y agoKeep in mind that the "radiation" from cell phones is non-ionizing -- very different.
- gojomo 17y agoTiny doses of things that are otherwise toxic -- including not just raditiation but many chemicals -- often seem to be protective. A theoretical mechanism is that small stresses activate but do not overwhelm beneficial protective/repair mechanisms.
- wozer 17y agoThat graph looks TOO good to be true.
- windsurfer 17y agoThat graph looks like the half-life curve of Co-60...
- drp 17y agoCancer death rate goes down to zero when everyone dies from other illnesses.
- tokenadult 17y agoHere's a reminder of issues to check in any news report about a scientific study, http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html from Google's director of research, Peter Norvig.
- celoyd 17y agoThese theories have been around for decades: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis Needless to say, they don't have a lot of mainstream acceptance.
- billswift 17y agoThat's the result of fear-mongering by anti-nuclear groups. Hell, there is NO support for the beliefs that power lines cause leukemia or cell phones cause brain cancer, but lots of idiots still believe it, as the results of environmentalist and "pro-consumer" fear-mongering.
- RK 17y agoRadiation hormesis (i.e. low level radiation being beneficial) is considered very controversial, but the data about how low levels of radiation affects humans is very bad. Most data that people work with is from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bomb survivors. On the low end of the scale the models usually just have a question mark. One of the models proposed is radiation hormesis. There is some other (controversial) data that people who are exposed to chronic radon exposure have lower levels of lung cancer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis The plot on this page shows some of the current guesses about low-level radiation response: http://web.princeton.edu/sites/ehs/osradtraining/biologicaleffects/Risk.htm http://web.princeton.edu/sites/ehs/osradtraining/biologicale... Hormesis would dip below the axis, indicating a less than zero risk.
- RobertL 17y agoUhh.. RK.. hormesis isn't just about radiation.. it's about all kinds of toxic substances.
- DannoHung 17y agoHmm, interesting, well, has anyone repeated the results in lab animals in a controlled environment?
- rflrob 17y agoIn reference 6 from the Wikipedia article on Radiation Hormesis, the abstract says "Data concerning about 85,000 exposed animals and their 45,000 corresponding controls, with a total of over 60,000 and 12,000 cancers in exposed and control animals, respectively, have been collected." So, for suitable definitions of controlled environment, they have been repeated. I'm frankly tempted to believe this data. There does seem to be a plausible mechanism of action, and there isn't, to my knowledge, much evidence to prefer the Linear No Threshold model. On the other hand, I probably won't go and tape a radioactive source over my pancreas, so I don't believe either model enough to actively do anything about it.
- reasonattlm 17y agoNote that heat shock hormesis and calorie restriction hormesis (which may involve the same underlying mechanisms) are demonstrably good for you. The science backing those forms of enhanced bodily health are good: a little damage and adversity provokes the body into much greater clean-up and defense efforts, with the net result of increased health and longevity. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis As other posters point out, the data for radiation hormesis is lacking in comparison. However, it's not an unreasonable hypothesis given the reaction of mammal biology to other types of low-level damage.
- StrawberryFrog 17y agothere is a kind of logic to this. Humans have evolved in an environment where there is continual low level background radiation. So like any other feature of the environment, we are adapted to cope with it, maybe even to expect and benefit from it.
- scotty79 17y agoStudy comparing apples to oranges ... Why anyone takes this seriously? Just because of thrill value? From Wikipedia: However, this study has been considered to have next to no scientific value, because it compares the irradiated population with the much older general population of Taiwan. A subsequent study by Hwang et al. (2006) found a significant exposure-dependent increase in cancer in the irradiated population, particularly leukemia in men and thyroid cancer in women, though this trend is only detected amongst those who were first exposed before the age of 30