Radiation and society

Radioimmunoassay and other uses of radionuclides in chemical and biomedical investigation are threatened by a pervasive fear of radiation at any level. Natural radiation exposure has always been with us and groups of people whose natural background radiation is up to 10 times the usual show no detectable harmful effects. Follow-up studies through 1982 of the survivors of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombing show only a 6--7% increase in cancer above that expected in the absence of their acute radiation exposure. Animal studies show that tumorigenesis is generally much less when a radiation dose is delivered at a lower dose-rate. A 20 year follow-up study of 35,000 patients who received 131I-uptake diagnostic tests that delivered 50 rem to the thyroid revealed no increase in thyroid cancer. Two independent follow-up studies of almost 50,000 hyperthyroid patients revealed no increase in leukemia in the 131I-treated patients who received 10 rem total body radiation. EPA headlines about radon in the home causing lung cancer fail to note that in the absence of smoking lung cancer is a rare disease. Lung cancer is not found among non-smoking uranium miners exposed to levels at 1,000 times the 70 year indoor levels that the EPA estimates would result in between 1 and 5 lung cancer deaths among 100 so exposed. Other studies are described that demonstrate that radiation exposure is a much weaker carcinogen than the general public believes it to be