The plutonium story may not be serious. Concern and fear are understandable if all we know is what the regulators have told us, but there is another side to the story. On the same day that the Paducah story broke, Paul Harvey reported about British scientists who voluntarily inhaled plutonium without apparent harm in an experiment designed to mimic the effects of a nuclear war.
A news release the same week reported that during the Manhattan A-bomb Project in the mid 1940s, 26 men accidentally ingested plutonium in amounts that far exceeded the level now considered dangerous. They were closely monitored. In 1987, over forty years later, only four of the 26 workers had died. In an average group of unexposed men the same age, ten would be expected to die. Two or three cancer deaths would have been expected an average group, but only one of the plutonium workers had died from cancer.
In the 1950’s, nuclear regulators established a linear non-threshold (LNT) model of radiation damage to the body as the basis for radiation protection policy that assumed that if radiation at a high level would damage the body a lot, then radiation that was just above zero would damage the body a little.
Nuclear scientists Ted Rockwell, John Cameron, and others strongly disagree, and say that small amounts of toxins, even radiation and chemicals, may benefit the health of those exposed. But regulators have ruled that almost any detectable amount of radiation is dangerous, despite the fact that it may be lower than the already existing background radiation found in nature near a facility or super fund site.
The health benefits of low level radiation.
There have been studies to investigate the health benefits of low level exposure to radiation and toxic chemicals. The technical name is hormesis. In 1994, after 12 years of deliberation the United Nations published a report titled, "Adaptive Responses to Radiation in Cells and Organisms", which indicated that a low dose of radiation actually increases the immunity against the toxic effect. This effect is similar to a vaccine, where a small amount of a dangerous disease, such as small pox or measles, is injected into a person to stimulate their immune system and guard against future infections. It is also similar to vitamin tablets that include selenium, boron, chromium and manganese, which are toxic in large amounts. In small doses, however, they stimulate our defense systems.
Dr. John Cameron, professor emeritus of medical physics at University of Wisconsin-Madison says that low levels of background radiation are not harmful. That radiation comes from the sun, minerals in the earth and other sources in nature. Our DNA has been under assault from background radiation since time began and has developed a mechanism for repairing radioactive and other damage. In an e-mail just this week Dr. John Cameron wrote me that a typical adult body would receive 30 million radioactive disintegrations each hour. In a day, billions of our cells are struck by radiation. In a year nearly every cell in your body has been hit, with no evidence of harm.
Most have not heard that deaths due to malignancy are lowest in the six U.S. States with the highest levels of background radiation and that the counties with the highest level of radon have the lowest lung cancer rates. I have heard it said that natural background radiation in mile high Denver is higher than the radiation levels in the Paducah plant.
Scientists such as Dr. T. D. Luckey of the University of Missouri, Dr. James Trosko of Michigan State University, Dr. Ed Calabrese of the University of Massachusetts and recognized Japanese scientists support data that indicate that exposure to low level radiation and toxic chemicals is beneficial to health. In their various writings the following are noted as examples.
Examples of health benefits of low level radiation (hormesis):
Japanese who survived the A-Bomb blast have been tested for years and have lived longer than an average unexposed group outside the bomb areas. Radiation was the cause of death in only one percent of those who were not killed by the bomb. Survivors on the outer edges of the blast who received up to 30 rem of radiation had no increase in cancer deaths. The surprising result was that those survivors receiving a moderate dose (10 to 15 rems) had fewer cancers that the outside control group.
A Canadian study of 4,000 nuclear workers had a cancer mortality rate far below 21,000 coal and natural gas plant workers. In Britain the cancer mortality rate of 70,600 exposed workers is less that that of 24,500 unexposed workers in the same plants.
A large study included more than 70,000 male shipyard workers who serviced nuclear powered ships in an area with background radiation. Dr. Cameron said, "While total mortality was lower than expected when compared to the general population, it was highest for the shipyard workers not exposed to radiation. The death rate for cancer among the radiation exposed workers was slightly lower than rates for men in the U.S. population". His point is that we should not go out and expose ourselves to ionizing radiation as a health benefit which was popular in the early 1900s, but we should stop fearing it so much. .
Conclusion:
Dr. Ted Rockwell has written that fear caused by official radiation control policies has caused many to by-pass needed medical radiation treatment and has caused billions of dollars to be allocated to "decontaminate" locations where in many cases the radiation is below the existing natural background radiation for the area.
Instead of panic and fear we should study more the beneficial effects of low level radiation. If the public were better educated about the lack of risk from low level radiation, the present unfounded radiation-phobia would disappear which could lead to a better future for United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC) in Paducah.
The writer is a local architect and engineer who has served on the Citizens Environmental Advisory Committee at the Paducah Plant. He became interested in the subject of radiation hormesis and started collecting articles long before being asked to serve. None of the following comes from meetings of that committee.
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