A Place to Stand

   I have a Google news alert for "LNT" the Linear No Threshold theory of radioactivity. I had a previous one for the "scientific consensus" of global warming, which is now more often mentioned by those saying it is bull than supporters. Recently I recognised the words of a news item flagged - It comes from, is acknowledged as a letter from me (which I previously thought had gone unpublished) and is used as one hook for a full article  in the Hong Kong based East Asia Times

We see the "environmentalists" are eager to talk about the Japanese catastrophe. Not the earthquake and tsunami which looks to have killed 10,000 people, but the consequent reactor failure which has caused neither death not injury to anybody. This ten thousandfold lack of balance is typical of the way the word "nuclear" is reported as if it were a form of black magic ... The LNT hypothesis has never been anything but an evidence free scare story. Despite its "official" acceptance by government apparatchiks in both the Soviet and "democratic" worlds it has never had any scientific evidence whatsoever behind it.

  The article is not purely about LNT/hormosis but about how risk is calculated, particularly by government, but it certainly supports my opinion, concluding

This is the reason why in an earthquake-prone area, government officials and people tend to act in a fashion that suggest an underestimation of risks; while with respect to nuclear power plants they behave in a fashion that suggests an overestimation of risks. The fault is not with them; rather it lies in what they think the rest of us expect from them.

  There are

By a curious coincidence Spiked have also done an article written by Bill Durodie, a journalist in Singapore which covers the fact that LNT is clearly false

Those who suggest that thousands, maybe even tens of thousands, of fatal cancers are linked to the Chernobyl disaster are basing these estimates on extrapolations from the effects of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. These estimates are derived using a linear extrapolation from the effects of high levels of radiation received in an instant as the bombs exploded. But most researchers recognise that the circumstances in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were very different to those in Chernobyl. Such estimates are, therefore, based on rather shaky evidence. It is like suggesting that because a temperature of 200 degrees Celsius would kill 100 per cent of human beings, so a temperature of 20 degrees Celsius should kill 10 per cent of them. In reality, our bodies are able to tolerate radiation up to a certain threshold. Low levels of radiation are almost certainly harmless.

   The East Asia Yimes have also published some previous letters from me.

 This follows a letter of mine they published which I have previously mentioned. I did not mention that I had postscripted the letter with a suggestion that the virtual impossibility of getting the MSM to mention LNT/hormesis made it something which Spiked should be interested in. I even volunteered to write it but heard nothing.

the linear no threshold theory of mass would say that since the chances that an elephant falling on you will kill you are roughly 100 per cent, the chance that putting on a hat will kill you must be must be about 0.1 per cent and multiplying that by the hat-wearing population of London would mean hundreds of deaths daily

   I am very pleased to say that there have been a number of articles mentioning LNT over the last few months and the balance has been very strongly that the no lower threshold series is largely or totally wrong. Of course it is a very small number compared to all news and since that theory has been responsible for preventing the human race getting inexpensive power for the last 40 years, I consider it far to little coverage. But it is real movement.

Congress blog, Council on Science & Health, blog common sense, depleted cranium, mounting body of evidence, history, Prof Wade Allison, history, LNT inconsistent with the data, Ted Rockwell, Society of Nuclear Medicine

More Technical
A list of links paper giving some more recent evidence, pdf, beneficial effects on small animals, therapeutic radon, British Journal of Radiology paper, Spas - where people think it works, Ramsar the world's highest natural, paper, Prof John McCarthy, Professor Bernard Cohen, radon mine results show hormesis