Remedy for radiation fear - discard the politicized science

While seeking a remedy for the ongoing crisis of radiation fear in Japan and everywhere else, the author reread a recent article on radiation hormesis. It describes the political motivation for creating this fear and mentions the evidence, in the first UNSCEAR report, of a factor of 3 reduction in leukemia incidence of the Hiroshima a-bomb survivors in the low dose zone. Producing a graph of the tabulated data reveals that they fit a hormetic J-curve, not a straight line as reported. UNSCEAR data on the lifespan reduction of mice and Guinea pigs exposed continuously to radium gamma rays indicate a threshold at about 2 gray per year. This information contradicts the conceptual basis for radiation protection and risk determination that was established in 1956-58. In this paper, beneficial effects and thresholds for harmful effects are discussed, and the biological mechanism is explained. The key point is the discovery that the rate of spontaneous DNA damage (double-strand breaks) is more than 1000 times the rate caused by average background radiation. It is the effect of radiation on an organism's very powerful adaptive protection systems that determines the dose-response characteristic. Low radiation up-regulates adaptive protection systems, while high radiation impairs these systems. The remedy for radiation fear is to expose and discard the politicized science. (author)