Are there safe levels of radiation

Because ionizing radiation is not an exotic carcinogen and mutagen which exposes a small segment of the population. Low-dose ionizing radiation is received from natural background sources, numerous medical procedures, nuclear pollution, flying, and sometimes from occupational exposures.

How many other proven human carcinogens can you name to which everyone is exposed on a daily and lifelong basis? The evidence that there is no safe dose-level of ionizing radiation no threshold dose means that journals and other media contribute to cancer and inherited afflictions whenever they include disproven claims which encourage a casual attitude toward extra exposures to low-dose ionizing radiation. We believe that you want to help prevent such miseries.

Assertions in this communication are supported in detail, and with very specific sourcing, in Gofman Chapters 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 32, Cancers require the presence of damaged genetic molecules in the single cells which turn malignant.

Likewise, inherited afflictions require the presence of damaged genetic molecules in the single cell from which a baby develops. The genetic molecules in a human cell-nucleus are the 46 human chromosomes, each consisting of one double-strand DNA helix plus associated proteins. After damage occurs to a genetic molecule, the cell attempts to repair it. If the cell achieves perfect repair, the genetic molecule regains its "mint quality" as if no damage had ever occurred.

The menace to health involves the genetic damage which is un repaired, un repairable, or mis repaired. The " troublesome trio. When the damage is complex for example, when the opposite strands of the double helix have been broken pieces of the DNA double-helix sometimes end up in the wrong place, or become permanently lost.

These failures of repair are not in dispute. By contrast, the cell is exquisitely efficient at repairing injury to single strands of the double helix. It has been estimated that, every day, each cell copes with at least 10, DNA injuries induced by routine chemical sources including free radicals produced by the cell itself. Such standard repairs might be compared to replacing a lamp's broken light bulb with a new bulb.

After "repair," the lamp works perfectly again. Ionizing radiation has demonstrated beyond any doubt its ability to break both strands of the DNA double helix at the same time. This ability has made it "famous" among toxic agents as a chromosome-breaker. If only one DNA strand breaks, the other strand holds the chromosome together. Countless experiments have been done on cells to measure the speed with which they repair radiation-induced DNA damage, both single-strand and double-strand injuries.

Even after extremely high radiation doses, that repair which does occur is complete within about 8 hours, and most of it is complete within about 2 hours. An "extremely high radiation dose" can be understood by comparison with the annual dose which everyone receives from natural sources.

Excluding radon, the natural dose per year is about 0. Therefore a common experimental dose to cells of rads, delivered in an instant "acute" dose-delivery , is about 1, times higher than the total annual natural dose.

And yet experiments show that human cells mobilize enough repair capacity repair enzymes to cope with rads all at once. Indeed, repair capacity seems not overwhelmed even at doses of rads and more. The explanation for residual, post-repair damage is not a lack of repair-capacity or time, but rather an inherent inability of the repair-system to fix certain complex injuries to genetic molecules.

A radiation-induced chromosome abnormality does not always kill the cell in which it persists, nor does it always prevent the cell from dividing.

When the injured cell divides, the same injury is replicated in the new cells. In the A-bomb survivors, extra chromosome abnormalities have been observed even 40 years after the bombings.

Their radiation-causation is indicated by the positive dose-response: The higher the bomb-dose, the higher the frequency of abnormalities Kodama Residual unrepaired and misrepaired chromosome damage in human blood samples, irradiated in lab dishes in vitro , is visually detectable at acute radiation doses as low as 2 rads, despite crude methods of observation Lloyd Moreover, the residual genetic damage which can not be detected with such methods may swamp the amount detected.

Does residual damage also exist, after repair-time, if low doses are received slowly by living humans in vivo? For example, extra chromosome damage has been observed among Alaskan natives from nuclear fallout, in spite of very gradual accumulation of about 0.

If residual genetic damage has been observed even from low radiation doses at slow dose-rates para. L, above , how can anyone still claim that evidence of harm at low doses is "just hypothetical," or that harm requires high doses? Here's how. If challenged, they say: 1 Since a connection is just hypothetical between real-world health effects and misrepaired or unrepaired genetic injury from radiation , the evidence of harm to health from low-dose radiation is just hypothetical; and 2 Since there are radiation doses lower than occupational doses, and lower than fallout doses, and lower than any doses we can ever afford to study, the harm at these lower doses will always remain unproven.

They suggest that maybe, at some extremely low dose or dose-rate, "repair" becomes perfect. We recognized a method which could cope with both difficulties. Beginning with Gofman pp.

In Gofman , we developed the method and the evidence in detail. Full presentation takes 70 pages not suitable for a journal. We wanted to know if the threshold issue, for ionizing radiation, could be settled.

Our analysis proves, by any reasonable standard of scientific proof, that there is no safe dose or dose-rate of ionizing radiation. We have found no refutation of our proof. For readers to understand how our method overcomes the obstacles described above para. Ionizing radiation includes beta particles, alpha particles, gamma rays, and x-rays; the term excludes radio, microwave, infra-red, and visible radiations.

Beta particles are electrons but they differ from the ordinary non-beta electrons in the human body in one important way. Beta particles are endowed with biologically unnatural energy. This energy causes them to travel through the cell and beyond at high speed, like tiny bullets. Many radioactive atoms called radio-nuclides, radio-isotopes decay into stable atoms by spitting out beta particles or alpha particles, which are much larger. Radio-nuclides often emit gamma rays too, in the process of decaying into stable nuclides.

Gamma rays are photons a sort of light having too much energy for humans to see. X-rays are like gamma rays, except x-rays have less energy per photon. Both are generated by "nature" and by man-made generators. The photons of x-rays and gamma rays do their damage to cells by knocking electrons out of ordinary molecules and causing them to become beta particles which travel through the cell and beyond with biologically unnatural energy.

There are about million typical cells in 1 cubic centimeter. The biological damage caused by ionizing radiation, including gamma rays and x-rays, is due to high-speed particles traveling through cells and unloading concentrated amounts of energy in unnatural places at random.

Each particle creates a very narrow path of disturbance called a primary "ionization track" as it unloads energy at irregular intervals. Alpha particles don't travel far; they unload their energy within just a few cells. Since virtually no one claims any threshold dose safe dose for alpha irradiation, our work involves high-speed electrons para. The amount of energy transferred in an instant, from the high-speed electron to nearby molecules, is often many times larger than the single energy-transfers which occur "anyway" in normal cell chemistry and metabolism.

This unique feature of ionizing radiation probably explains why ionizing radiation is so "good" at breaking chromosomes and inflicting other complex injuries on the genetic molecules. Every track acting without help from any other track has a chance of causing an unrepairable carcinogenic injury in a cell. At high radiation doses, many tracks from high-speed electrons pass through every cell-nucleus. We focus on the nucleus because that is where the human's genetic molecules are located.

How many tracks? Download this data Event. We have switched off comments on this old version of the site. To comment on crosswords, please switch over to the new version to comment. Read more All rights reserved. Typical dosage recorded in those Chernobyl workers who died within a month. Single does which would kill half of those exposed to it within a month. Single dosage which would cause radiation sickness, including nausea, lower white blood cell count.

Not fatal. Max radiation levels recorded at Fukushima plant yesterday, per hour. Exposure of Chernobyl residents who were relocated after the blast in Lowest annual dose at which any increase in cancer is clearly evident. Airline crew flying New York to Tokyo polar route, annual exposure. Radiation per hour detected at Fukushimia site, 12 March.

With the introduction of each new nuclear technology since — atmospheric testing, nuclear power plants, depleted uranium — it is obvious that ionizing radiation is a major cause of cancer globally, and uranium is a major radioactive component of nuclear weapons, including depleted uranium weapons systems introduced to the battlefield in in Gulf War I.

This breast cancer map from Centers for Disease Control data see below illustration identifies that within a mile radius of nuclear reactors is where two-thirds of all U. The map see below illustration of nuclear power plants in the U.

This is further confirmed by the breast cancer clusters identified in Japan and California, which occurred where it rained the day the Chernobyl radiation cloud passed over and the rain deposited the fission products in the environment.

Physicist Dr.