TODAY. Low dose ionising radiation as a cause of illness and death

It’s not fashionable to talk about low level radiation as causing illness. If it gets mentioned at all, well, we tentatively state low level radiation as linked with or associated with illness.

Nice and vague. We all know that you can’t respectably experiment on humans, to get absolute proof.

The nuclear lobby doesn’t mind admitting to the harmful effects of immediate high doses of ionising radiation. Those effects are so bad for the relatively few individuals that suffer them, – why it almost seems to prove that low doses are OK, (even good for you as the “hormesis” fans claim)! It’s easier to dwell on, and deplore the effects of high dose radiation on one person, which is, for some unknown reason, now the most popular topic on my nuclear-news website.

What is ignored, especially by the nuclear lobby, is the collective effect over time, of low level radiation. Nobody seems to have a figure for this. But there have been several thoroughly researched epidemiological studies, showing the harmful effects on exposed populations. The most recent was published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ Aug 16, 2023 accessible free of charge).

The thing is – people can get their head around the idea of one individual having a painful illness and death.

The less dramatic thought is – say for example – if 10 million people were exposed over time to low level radiation, and their risk of fatal cancer was increased from the normal risk of 5%, by another 8% (as the BMJ study showed) that would result in one million three hundred thousand fatal cancers.

When we pause to think about this less exciting information about slowly developing illness of great numbers of people – it’s pretty serious!

So this is the collective effect of low level radiation – that doesn’t get talked about.

One huge study recently has been based on dual research – i.e. on epidemiological research and experimentation on mice. This kind of study is similar to the work of Sir Richard Doll in the 1950s proving that cigarette-smoking causes cancer.

Now the corporate world prefers terms like “linked” and “associated with’ – terms that blur the reality of the scandals of environmental pollution and health. And there’s no bigger scandal than the pervasive lie that low level ionising radiation does not matter.

August 17, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina's notes, radiation

3 Comments »

Vague article. What do you mean by low dose radiation? Do you mean Radioactive pollutants? Do you mean some nebulous mysterious thing from a geiger counter. There is no mystery silly. There is uranium and radium in the water in many places. There is worse like i131, st, pl Why obfuscate with nuclear industry language. Typical of stupid human monkeys. Radioactive polluting materials with radium, uranium, and much worse are omnipresent

Comment by Jejuh | August 18, 2024 | Reply
- Ionising radiation that is absorbed in human tissue is measured in millisieverts. Low dose ionising radiation is the amount that is received above what is regarded as “background radiation”, measured in millisieverts (mSv) per year. Background radiation is up to 1 mSv per year. Additional radiation is regarded as above that level. Up to 20 mSv per is regarded as “normal” for nuclear workers.
  
  Comment by Christina Macpherson | August 18, 2024 | Reply
  - The graphic shows it in the rain. From u mills. From waste sites.
    Most people have enough sense to know that uranium, radium, polonium, cs137 etc in the body are toxic as hell. They showed that minute amounts of plutonium breathed in by dogs at an enclosed lab gave 10 out of 14 dogs lung cancer. Minute amounts of many radioactve elements taken into the body are lethal. Other diltuted radioactive elements cause cancer and other diseases and rwproducive issues like birth defects.They are chronically deadly. Many are heavy metals that are far more acutely toxic than nonradioactive heavy metals. Why dilly dally around with vague notions like low level radiation. The radioactivity measure from geiger counters has to come from a radioactive elements somewhere. If any of it gets into your body it will either poison you acutely or chronically.
    
    Comment by Jeju | August 18, 2024