In the Radiation Bogey we noted that the correlation between background radiation and cancer incidence over the 50 states of the Union was significantly negative (-39.09%) -- the more radiation, the less cancer. At the time we thought it an amusing, but immaterial statistic: only 1% of all cancers are radiation-induced, and a correlation is not a cause-effect link. For example, the high radiation states are the mountain states where the environment tends to be healthier than in the crowded, industrial East, whereas Florida, with the highest cancer incidence and low (sea-level) radiation background, is a "retiree" state
¾and cancer, predominantly an old man's disease, could have crept into the statistics by Florida's age distribution rather than by its environment.Another time we remarked, tongue in cheek, that since man has never been without radiation since he appeared on this planet, we have no proof that he can live without it.
Boy, were we wrong!
About the tongue in cheek, that is. We should have known better when we received a paper given by Dr Jerry Cohen of the at the 5th Congress of the Lawrence Livermore Lab at the 5th Congress of the International Radiation Protection Association in Jerusalem in March of last year. Cohen also ran correlations, and though he conceded that the idea of low level radiation being beneficial was merely speculative, he asked the all-important question: What right have you to neglect such a possibility?
Wait a minute! Have not the sick for generations flocked to the spas of Jachymov and Piestany in Czechoslovakia, Bad Gastein in Austria, and other spas where the water is unusually radioactive?(*) And have not people, by instinct and experience, often found health benefits long before science proved them right (lime juice against scurvy, avoidance of pork with its invisible parasites)?
OK, some of the titles in the spoof ad on the opposite page are hoaxes; in a sense, all of them are. But we are deadly serious about the book described below. It deals with a phenomenon called hormesis.
* Some other points of interest about Jachymov, whose rich uranium deposits have now been completely depleted for the Soviets by slave labor of political prisoners. This is where Marie and Pierre Curie got their pitchblende from; there also used to be silver deposits there, and from the 16th century, coins were minted in the town, whose German name was Joachimstal. The coins were called Joachimstaler, and later only Taler, which in colonial America became the word dollar. $mall world?
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Vol. 9, No. 2
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 9, No. 2 Date: November 23, 2004 12:45 PM Title: Slaves to Fashion
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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