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Re: [Phys-l] radiation cancers?

Doesn't surprise me -- My Hero J. Gofman "knows" ~ 3/4 of all breast cancers are radiation induced or contributed by.

I've included the political interference in his work below.



(3) Meanwhile, in the early 1960s, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) asked Gofman to establish a Biomedical Research Division at the AEC's Livermore National Laboratory, for the purpose of evaluating the health effects of all types of nuclear activities. From 1963-1965, Gofman served as the division's first director and concurrently as an Associate Director of the full laboratory. Then he stepped down from the administrative activities in order to have more time for his own laboratory research on Cancer and chromosomes (the Boveri Hypothesis), on radiation-induced chromosomal mutations and genomic instability, and for his analytical work on the epidemiologic data from the Japanese atomic-bomb survivors and other irradiated human populations.

By 1969, Gofman and a Livermore colleague, Dr. Arthur R. Tamplin, had concluded that human exposure to ionizing radiation was much more serious than previously recognized. Because of this finding, Gofman and Tamplin spoke out publicly against two AEC programs which they had previously accepted. One was Project Plowshare, a program to explode hundreds or thousands of underground nuclear bombs in the Rocky Mountains in order to liberate (radioactive) natural gas, and to use nuclear explosives also to excavate harbors and canals. The second was the plan to license about 1,000 commercial nuclear power plants (USA) as quickly as possible. In 1970, Gofman and Tamplin proposed a 5-year moratorium on that activity.

The AEC was not pleased. Seaborg recounts some of the heated conversations among the Commissioners in his book The Atomic Energy Commission under Nixon: Adjusting to Troubled Times (1993). By 1973, Livermore de-funded Gofman's laboratory research on chromosomes and Cancer. He returned to teaching full-time at U.C. Berkeley, until choosing an early and active "retirement" in order to concentrate fully on pro-bono research into human health-effects from radiation.

His 1981, 1985, 1990, 1994, and 1995/96 books present a series of findings. His 1990 book includes his proof, "by any reasonable standard of biomedical proof," that there is no threshold level (no harmless dose) of ionizing radiation with respect to radiation mutagenesis and carcinogenesis --- a conclusion supported in 1995 by a government-funded radiation committee. His 1995/96 book provides evidence that medical radiation is a necessary co-actor in about 75% of the recent and current Breast Cancer incidence (USA) --- a conclusion doubted but not at all refuted by several peer-reviewers.

John W. Gofman is the son of David and Sarah Gofman --- who immigrated to the USA from czarist Russia in about 1905. JWG was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in September 1918.



http://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/RMP/AboutAuthorF.html



bc, reader of his books (since, ca. 1985).



On 2009, Jul 11, , at 15:58, Brian Whatcott wrote:

This URL
http://tinyurl.com/mct6zq
indicates 0.56 Mdeaths/yr from an incidence of 1.4 Mcancers/yr
as table 1.14 on page 54. Reading the text on that page, it seems
your uncertainty is shared by people in the radiation oncology field too.

Brian W


kyle forinash wrote:
Hi,

I've gotten myself really confused I think. Here is data from Chernobyl
used to calculate radiation risk. (Cancers, not death rate.)

Chernobyl data:

Dose(Sv)/Victims/Expected cancers/Actual cancers/Excess cancers
<0.01 42,702 4267 4286 19
0.01-0.1 21,479 2191 2223 32
0.1-0.2 5307 574 599 25
0.2-0.5 5858 623 759 136
0.5-1.0 2882 289 418 129
1.0-2.0 1444 140 273 133
2 300 23 55 32

A plot of Dose vs excess/victims has slope ~0.45 cancers/Sv exposure.

Assuming a linear dose model we can calculate the number of cancers due
to a given exposure.

Annual US average exposure is ~3.6mSv/year (~3mSv natural) so 304x10^6
people x 0.45cancers/Sv x 3.6mSv = 492000 cancers (rate of 0.00162)
caused by radiation. Total cancer rate (CDC) is ~0.00475 or
1.4x10^6/year. So radiation cancers are 34% of the total?

That can't be right can it?

What did I get wrong?

kyle


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