Radiation is good for you?

a reply to: Arbitrageur

The Gulf Coast is one big chemical plant, so I'm not sure if you can compare.

a reply to: Grimpachi

Sorry, we're mostly in agreement but type specifically does not matter, type merely has characteristics which must be taken into consideration. It's part of the equation, but you can't say that a specific type will always be harmful or harmless.

originally posted by: Mianeye
Hiroshima, Nagasaki, 1000 of nuclear test bombs, Chernobyl, Fukushima, 3 Mile Island, lost nuclear bombs, Nuclear power plants and it's nuclear waste, back ground radiation, Roentgen photo .

We should all be dead by now, or...

No, but we all have skin cancer from the "big bad sun", and lung cancer from "second hand smoke"

All the animal at the Russian reactor site that went bang are doing well.
it is lush and green. not like they tell us!
and show in films.
and the post about the man who says he swam in the rad pool?

The DUH part here is too much radiation is BAD for you.

Medical radiation treatments to help cancer patiences, and other things.

Some radiation is helpful.

Not too much you broke the limit when you start glowing in the dark.

originally posted by: buddha
All the animal at the Russian reactor site that went bang are doing well.
it is lush and green. not like they tell us!
and show in films.
and the post about the man who says he swam in the rad pool?

Chernobyl having abundant plant and animal life isn't a secret. There has been a lot of animal mutations, but for the most part animals don't live as long so they don't have as much time to develop long term problems. Plants thriving in the area have been the focus of a lot of scientific research.

originally posted by: pl3bscheese
a reply to: Grimpachi

but you can't say that a specific type will always be harmful or harmless.

Actually you can.

Long wave radiation, such as UV rays, can cause cancer. Short wave gamma rays are essentially a death ray.

a reply to: Thecakeisalie

I stand corrected. A gamma ray is so energetic that unless focused towards cancer cells, it will always be harmful to the orgsnism.

Many factors determine how radiation can affect people.

The two most obvious are internal vs external exposure, generally speaking, external exposure is safer than internal.

Other factors include such things as radiation type, the biological half-life vs decay half-life etc.


As far as internal exposure goes, when a radioactive particle is ingested into the human body the following scenarios are the outcome for the cells surrounding it:

1. The cell is unaffected.
2. The cell is killed.
3. The cell is damaged but is able to repair itself before replication.
4. The cell is damaged and is unable to repair itself before replication.

That is basically it in a nutshell.

As far as how much is safe or bad for you, that is for you to determine. There are many many opinions that swing both ways.

Personally, I think excess radiation above normal background levels are bad for you. But that's just me.

I know what this all means, but choose to keep it to myself for now. Let's just say that Tesla was starting to understand this, but I don't think he fully grasped what he was looking for.

a reply to: Moors

Yes cancer will increase but that is from all environmental factors not just radiation. Edit: I once heard that our air has 600 pollutants in it that didnt exist 2000 years ago...

No-one disagrees that radiation can kill. But as you are currently bathed in all manner of radiation and not dead we can agree that some level is not fatal. Some level is not damaging in any way.

Higher levels of safe radiation doses mean lower clean up costs - yes - just like when the safe dose was doubled in Japan post Fukup. Did the incidence of all cancer increase by 100%? Nope.

No-one is saying gamble your life on it - as my post says it is wrong to use stat data to predict a specific persons reaction to anything.

Your body cant become immune to radiation? Why arent you dying from the background dose you get everyday then?

I heard a lovely fact the other day. Do you know what defines the start of the 'Modern Era' in Archaeology terms? 1st Jan 1950. Do you know why? Because after that date everything is so irradiated that accurate Carbon dating becomes impossible.

originally posted by: UltraMind
Ok so over multiple posts I have seen the criticism of what was reported in the New York Times a while ago - namely the alleged fact that higher background radiation may reduce the incidence of certain cancers. Unfortunately on the threads I have read there seems to be little argument on why this might actually be true, it all seems to be 'yeah right sure it does'.

So I have started to have a little poke around regarding what evidence may be out there. Pretty quickly I hit this:
"Natural Background Radiation and Cancer Death in Rocky Mountain States and Gulf Coast States.
Calculations based on data from NCRP reports show that the average level of natural background radiation (NBR) in Rocky Mountain states is 3.2 times that in Gulf Coast states. However, data from the American Cancer Society show that age-adjusted overall cancer death in Gulf Coast states is actually 1.26 times higher than in Rocky Mountain states
(C)1998Health Physics Society"
LINK

SO that means higher radiation = lower cancer deaths

However the Wiki page for Radiation Hormesis also has refutation studies and comments:
Wiki

I have to say that I tend towards the hormesis argument. I can liken it to the fact that when you start to starve a human the internal repair rates increase (until the bodies resources are depleted). It appears that if exposed to slightly higher radiation the body reacts and starts to repair any cell damage but effectively over compensates.

Does this mean we should all start irradiating ourselves? Well no obviously, I think that there is sufficient emphasis that applying statistical analysis like this to individuals would be erroneous. After all you (or I) may be that 1/1000 that is especially susceptible, or other environmental factors cause noise in the results.

There's a brilliant example of this noise: It was found that in one area with radioactive radon gas that cancer rates were lower, however it was also noticed that it was relatively poor area with lots of high rise buildings. Hence a greater proportion of the population did not live at ground level where the gas accumulates.

But we must be careful, the disproving of one study does not disprove them all.

I just wish people would not be so quick to utterly write off this subject.

I thank you for your time.

Thank you for you post and notion.