Health benefits from low-dose irradiation

Whole-body exposures of mice and humans show no harm from low doses of ionizing radiation. Forty reports show statistically significant, p < 0.01, beneficial effects when cancer and total mortality rates were examined in mice. In vitro experiments indicate that radiogenic metabolism, adaptive repair mechanisms, such as DNA repair enzymes, and the essential nature of ionizing radiation are responsible for part of this activity. However, overwhelming evidence shows that low-dose irradiation increases immune competence. Such data negate the linear concept, which has no reliable whole-animal data to support it in the low-dose range. Cell culture data are not pertinent; such cells do not have a complete immune system