Radiation Hormesis Confirmed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

With respect to radiation exposure, the standard model for morbidity/mortality has been a true linear relationship. The Linear no Threshold Model (LNT) postulates that no dose of radiation is safe and that any dose above background will cause an increase in cancer. I use the term “postulates” because even the most diehard LNT proponents concede that there is no epidemiological evidence to support it because verifying the LNT would require an extremely large test population that is observed over many decades and the theoretical increase in cancer would be practically impossible to differentiate from the control group after all behavioral, genetic, and other factors are taken into account.

The population of Ramsar Iran has been studied because radiation from natural hot springs exposes the local population to doses of 260 mSv/yr as compared to 3.6 mSv/yr in the United States. Although the population of Ramsar has only been under evaluation for about 15 years, the researchers found no statistically significant difference in chromosome abnormalities or cancer.

It has long been argued that radiation exposure and morbidity is not a purely linear relation and that low doses of radiation are not harmful to health. This is known as radiation hormesis. Hormesis refers to a biphasic dose response curve. In layman terms that means a toxin may produce a reduction in harmful effects at low dosage. The concept revolves around the theory that DNA repair mechanisms are robust enough to repair themselves at low doses with the same, or even greater efficiency than at background levels. While epidemiological data on this is difficult to come by, it is not nonexistent.

Add to the Ramsar studies the latest from the Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division and the “radiation hormesis” theory gets another big piece of verification:

“Our data show that at lower doses of ionizing radiation, DNA repair mechanisms work much better than at higher doses,” says Mina Bissell, a world-renowned breast cancer researcher with Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division. “This non-linear DNA damage response casts doubt on the general assumption that any amount of ionizing radiation is harmful and additive.”

Bissell was part of a study led by Sylvain Costes, a biophysicist also with Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division, in which DNA damage response to low dose radiation was characterized simultaneously across both time and dose levels. This was done by measuring the number of RIF, for “radiation induced foci,” which are aggregations of proteins that repair double strand breaks, meaning the DNA double helix is completely severed.

“We hypothesize that contrary to what has long been thought, double strand breaks are not static entities but will rapidly cluster into preferred regions of the nucleus we call DNA repair centers as radiation exposure increases,” says Costes. “As a result of this clustering, a single RIF may reflect a center where multiple double strand breaks are rejoined. Such multiple repair activity increases the risks of broken DNA strands being incorrectly rejoined and that can lead to cancer.”

Costes and Bissell have published the results of their study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in a paper titled “Evidence for formation of DNA repair centers and dose-response nonlinearity in human cells.” Also co-authoring the paper were Teresa Neumaier, Joel Swenson, Christopher Pham, Aris Polyzos, Alvin Lo, PoAn Yang, Jane Dyball, Aroumougame Asaithamby, David Chen and Stefan Thalhammer.

I did a thread the other day on the latest information from a Medica Journal - Report is Peer Reviewed.

14,000 deaths already and more to come.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by quedup


Mangano's work doesnt stand up to much scrutiny.

blogs.scientificamerican.com...

For those who are new to the term Hormesis:

is the term for generally favorable biological responses to low exposures to toxins and other stressors.

... hormesis is a dose response phenomenon characterized by a low dose stimulation, high dose inhibition, resulting in either a J-shaped or an inverted U-shaped dose response. Such environmental factors that would seem to produce positive responses have also been termed “eustress”.

en.wikipedia.org...

Examples of such would be exercise, certain polyphenols and even low doses of certain x-ray exposure.