Saturday, January 7, 2012

The Politics of Radiation Research


Research on the effects of low-levels of ionizing radiation is fundamentally political for obvious reasons.

Hence, the timing, source, and conclusion of the study reported here raise questions:

New data on low-dose radiation 21 December 2011Results from America's Berkeley National Laboratory have cast doubt on the assumption that risk from radiation is always proportional to exposure – a theory that underpins most measures for radiological protection.


Majia here: Watching the effects of a single-dose or even multiple doses of low-level ionizing radiation on cell repair in the laboratory is simply not generalizable to real world exposure. The study suffers from poor “ecological validityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_validity

Scientists will of course recognize the limitation of the study's finding for external generalizability. The purpose of the study is to CAST DOUBT on the epidemiological research on the effects of low-level ionizing radiation


The best way to study the effects of low-level ionizing radiation is epidemiologically. 

Epidemiological research looks at entire populations and seeks to correlate disease patterns with independent variables. Quite a lot of epidemiological research has demonstrated the impact of low-levels of ionizing radiation

Enenews has an entire forum dedicated to this issue: http://enenews.com/forum-effects-of-low-level-radiation

Here is a sample study conducted on the effects of Fukushima in the US http://www.radiation.org/reading/pubs/HS42_1F.pdf

I found the link to the article cited above at Ex-SKF. I am re-posting two very concise replies to the article’s conclusion demonstrating the problem of ecological validity:

Anonymous said...
"Contaminated environments are no such things as one-time events.
Overwhelm an already slow process with more events than it can handle and the battle is lost."

The repair process runs inside a cell. Damage to a specific cell IS a one-time event.

If there is continuous damage to the SAME CELL, we are no longer talking about low-level radiation :)

Atomfritz said...
"If there is continuous damage to the SAME CELL, we are no longer talking about low-level radiation :)"

It is called "low level" radiation because the average appears low.
"Hot particles" cause localized high-radiation spots in the body.
You could call these "cancer seeds" in some ways.



Some of my previous post on radiation effects



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