WHERE'S THE DAMAGE?

What I have overlooked, of course, is the old saying dosis venenum fecit: it is the dose that makes the poison. In sufficiently high quantities, radiation, arsenic, milk and honey all kill; and in sufficiently small quantities they are all beneficial (yes, arsenic comes under hormesis, too).

In 1988, after taking the effects of radon into account, the Natio-nal Council on Radiation Protection raised its estimate of the average dose received by Americans to 360 mrem/year, of which 88% are due to natural sources (radon 55%, cosmic 8%, rocks and soil 8%, internal from radioisotopes in the body 11%); the rest comes from the medical sector (15%) and consumer products (3%), leaving less than 1% for "others" and even in that category the nuclear fuel cycle is in third place with 0.1% after occupational exposure and fallout.

The average cosmic component of 8% or 27 mrem increases roughly by 0.33 mrem per hour of flying time at high altitudes, so that a frequent flyer who does 1,000 hours per year adds a mere 330 mrem to the average level, still ending up well below the dose received by the population in parts of Brazil without any ill effects. If you want a more accurate dependence of dose as a function of night altitude, see pp. 20-21 of the report quoted below,(1) but the whole thing is laughable, something like pro-rating the casualties for jumping out of upper-floor windows to the case of jumping from a one-inch doorstep.

No ill effects on air crews have ever been noted (except by the New Yorker's Brodeur the Ecoporneur, who hints darkly at children with club feet born to pilots), and that is a strong argu-ment against the low-level radiation hysteria. (This is, however, very different from the opposite: pointing to the superior health of pilots. This does not mean much, because good health is a quali-fication for their job, and it is closely watched in frequent medical examinations.)

The absence of health effects is even more marked in the case of Cornwall, the south-western-most county of England, and a very lovely spot, if you will permit me some personal reminiscences: the southern-most tip is Lizard Point, which is where I was as a 20 year old radar mechanic on a Czechoslovak squadron in the RAF on D-Day 1944. But to return to Cornwall (and Devon), the dose the population receives from radon is way out of line with the rest of Britain, as shown by the 3-dimensional plot published by the British National Radiological Protection Board.

FIGURE: 3-d plot of radon dose in England w/large spike in SW corner

Are the Cornish dropping like flies from cancer, leukemia and the bubonic plague? If there were the slightest suspicion of extra cancers, Greenpeace and the other ecofreaks would long since have mounted a noisy campaign to save Cornwall from extinction. I would not be surprised if Cornwall's cancer incidence were found to be below average, just as Prof. Cohen found in radon-rich counties in the US [AtE Feb 90].

On the subject of radon, I feel good about having plugged the issue since 1980 as a case of gross inconsistency, not of acute danger, often warning that I am not beating the alarm drum. In an article of fundamental importance (2), Dr Ralph Lapp examines detailed New Jersey data and concludes that radon is not a sig-nificant public health problem. For example, immediate remedia-tion of all homes with concentrations above 4 pCi/l, as recommended by the EPA, would affect 0.1% of lung cancer mor-tality, would have the potential of saving less than one non-smoker's life per year (in New Jersey) -- and because of the latency period, the life would only be saved after the year 2,000.

I am glad to see that the lung cancer risk from radon is far smaller than estimated by the EPA's formulas, but the EPA's double standard remains, for it continues to discriminate against nuclear power with an unchanged ratio of at least 40 :1.

[1] Exposure of the population in the US and Canada from natural background radiation, NCRP Report. no. 94, Washington, DC, 1987. [2] "Radon Health Effects?", Health Physics Newsletter Jan. 1990.