Is environmental radiation protection an attempt to psychologically avoid confronting our own fear?

Fear is part of the natural human condition. It resides within all our psyches, but perhaps because we try to keep it hidden, and to pretend it doesn't exist, we do not recognize it as a powerful and motivating force. Refusal to acknowledge fear can lead to unrecognised bias in determining an acceptable paradigm. The early pioneers of radiation work, and also those working with radiation prior to 1945 had no fear of radiation. The fear of radiation was caused by the atomic weapons deployed to end the war in Japan, and the subsequent nuclear arms race ending with the stalemate of mutually assured destruction. In order for this scenario to be convincing, horrific and often exaggerated messages of the awfulness of nuclear power had to be used. As a result, many people have a fear of radiation. Many people who work with radiation have the same fear, and subscribe to the simplistic and unscientific belief that if large doses of radiation are demonstrably harmful all doses must be harmful. It is this which has driven the LNT model, when there is much evidence to suggest that low doses of radiation are not deleterious to man. The suggestion is now being made in some quarters that it is necessary to examine the effects of radiation on species other than man. Why? If it is to examine mechanisms of radiation induced effects in different species, then there is scientific value. If it is to do a general trawl through different species in an attempt to find one that is singularly radiosensitive, it has propaganda but little scientific value. It has been suggested that radiation protection be less anthropocentric, but this is meaningless. We, as humans, cannot presume to decide that the greatest worry of a koala bear is radiation. The only assumptions that can be made is that as all animal behaviour involves eating, sleeping and sex, any environmental disturbance that prevents this is bad for the animal as an individual. As essentially omnivorous primates, it is not logical for humans as a species to concern themselves with the welfare of individual animals. The biggest danger to animals is human destabilization of a complex ecosystem. Chernobyl was bad for humans, but wildlife around the plant has flourished. Advocating radiation protection policies for animals is a seriously flawed approach that is pandering to a human fear, and the logical instability that is a corollary fear, that allows serious causes of pollution and environmental destruction to be ignored. (author)