Radiation and Health

Renewed momentum behind nuclear energy has the potential to open a new era for the secure and clean power source as demand for electricity grows strongly around the world. ⁽¹⁾

Radiation is a key part of nuclear power, so it is worthwhile reviewing this topic.

Measurement

A rem (roentgen equivalent man) is a unit of equivalent dose, effective dose, and committed dose, which are dose measures used to estimate potential health effects of low levels of ionizing radiation on the human body.

A rem is a large dose of radiation, so the millirem (mrem), which is one thousandth of a rem, is often used for the dosage commonly encountered, such as the amount of radiation received from medical X-rays and background sources.

The average person experiences a dose of about 620 mrems per year. International Standards consider exposure to as much as 5,000 mrems (5 rem) a year safe for those who work with and around radioactive material.

Simply examining the average kitchen, one finds a cornucopia of items that emit enough radiation to detect with a Geiger counter in both man-made consumer products and natural foods. Avocados, bananas, bricks and smoke detectors all give off gamma radiation but at levels which are incredibly low. Brazil nuts are the most radioactive items we eat. Potassium-40 packed bananas are well known for their radioactivity, so much so that a banana’s worth of activity is used as an informal measurement of radiation, called the Banana Equivalent Dose. One BED is equal to 0.01 millirem.

Did you know your coffee is radioactive too? Carrots, white potatoes, red meat, and lima beans all contain roughly the same amount of potassium per kilogram, and thus radiation as bananas.

However, in spite of all this, you actually have little to worry about the radioactivity in your food. Even at the often-obscene levels that Americans drink coffee, there’s no danger whatsoever. And for reference, you’d have to consume between one and two million kilograms of Brazil nuts to reach a potentially lethal dose of radiation. ⁽²⁾

Cigarettes

It has been known for a long time that cigarette tobacco naturally contains radioactive nuclides such as 210Pb and 210Po.

Conservative estimates put the level of radiation absorbed by a pack and a half day smoker at the equivalent of 300 chest X-rays every year. ⁽³⁾

Others report the equivalent of 800 X-rays and the National Institute of Health published a radiation exposure chart which shows that smoking 30 cigarettes per day is the equivalent of 2,000 chest X-rays per year. ⁽⁴⁾

Here is a table listing exposures:

620 mrem average yearly exposure mrem

Note that living near a nuclear power station provides less than 0.01 mrem annually!

EPA and Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Standards

People living in higher radiation background level environments than are now permitted by EPA and NRC standards actually have less cancer and better health than those in lower radiation environments. This is the phenomenon of radiation hormesis which says that a little bit of radiation is actually good for you.

Radiation hormesis explains why residents of Colorado, who endure the nation’s highest levels of background radiation have the lowest rates of cancer, while residents of the Mississippi Delta, with the lowest background exposures have the highest cancer rates in the country.

Regarding radioactive sites, EPA and NRC have stringent standards, 0.015 rem and 0.100 rem per year, respectively before a site can be released to the public. And speaking of the public, have you been to Grand Central Station in New York or St. Peter’s Square in Rome? The rules that would be applied in the decommissioning of US nuclear power plants would require the stone structures of Grand Central and St. Peter’s Square to be dismantled and buried because of their radioactivity.

If you want another place with a radiation field in excess of the 0.015 rem per year EPA requirement for cleanup of radioactive contaminated sites prior to release for public use, visit downtown Sana Fe, New Mexico. A 2300 pound rock can be found in a small park setting at the intersections of Don Gaspar and Waster streets. People congregate around this radioactive sire every day.

High Dosage

Ramsar, Iran is a popular seaside resort that is a favorite recreational area for high school and college age students. Radium 15 times more radioactive than plutonium is present in over a 25 square mile area. Radiation fields have been found in locally grown produce and meats served to tourists in resort restaurants. How high are the levels? They’re 790 times higher than the safe levels established for public use by NRC.

Yet despite the high natural background level in Ramsar (~79 rem per year) the frequency of cancer and the life span of people living in the area is not noticeably different when compared to other general populations around the world.

Residents of Finland receive an annual dose of radiation three times higher than a person would receive living in the zone surrounding Chernobyl which is excluded from habitation.

Radiation Hormesis

Radiation exposure extends lifespan. There is no question that high amounts of radiation are harmful, but low amounts are beneficial to humans and animals. This is the concept of hormesis which applies throughout nature. Hormesis means that high and low doses produce opposite effects, with low doses providing beneficial effects and high doses the oppose

Prof. Ed Calabrese presented a comprehensive summary of the development of the linear non-threshold model of cancer risk assessment contained in about 100 papers in the peer reviewed industrial hygiene, toxicology, health physics, and radiation health scientific literature. Included are examples of scientific misrepresentations and misconduct that were offered to support the conclusions and perspectives offered. ⁽⁵⁾

Calabrese states: “The foundations of cancer risk assessment represents a century of significant uncorrected mistakes and scientific misconduct, dominated by powerful self-interests and politicized ideological actions involving the US National Academy of Sciences, Science journal, Multiple Nobel Prize winners, and elite leaders of the field of radiation genetics, from the 1920s to the 1990s.”

• The linear non-threshold (LNT) model assumes that every increment of a chemical or radiation dose, no matter how small, constitutes an increased cancer risk for humans.
• The contrasting threshold dose-response model assumes an exposure level below which there is no increases cancer risk.

Enhanced Health

1. D. Luckey estimates that there are more than 2,000 published research papers showing enhanced health in animals and humans from low dose ionizing radiation. ⁽⁶⁾

A book by Charles L. Sanders titled Radiation Hormesis and the linear No Threshold Assumption reports on a case of an almost perfect study in a human population that demonstrates the highly significant protective effects of near continuous exposure to gamma radiation. To the researchers surprise only seven cancer deaths were found, 225 fewer than would have occurred had the building been free of radiation. Instead of radiation increasing the death toll by 30%, it may have reduced the death toll by a staggering 97%. The number of birth defects among children born in this radioactive environment also confounded LNT theory. Instead of 48 defects expected, just three occurred.

Summary

In spite of the science, governments continue to use the LNT model. Misuse of this model has produced spending in excess of $1 trillion in the United States alone for negligible health benefits just for governmental environmental cleanup programs, while truly significant measures that would protect public health remains unfunded. It’s long overdue that serious reconsideration be given to the LNC model.

In industrialized countries, we now treat more than one million patients with radioactivity, including 50 percent of all US cancer patients with obviously positive results. Literally, hundreds of thousands of medical workers exposed to frequent low-level radiation have experienced similar positive health benefits. ⁽⁷⁾

References

1. “A new era for nuclear energy beckons as projects, policies and investments increase,” iea.org, January 16, 2025
2. Ross Pomeroy, “Your coffee is radioactive, and that’s okay,” realclearscience.com, February 22, 2016
3. Robert N. Proctor, “Puffing on polonium, New York Times, December 1, 2006
4. “Radioactive polonium in tobacco,” July 26, 2005
5. Edward J. Calabrese, “Cancer risk assessment: it’s wretched history and what it means for public health,” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, March 7, 2024
6. D. Luckey, Radiation Hormesis, Boca Raton, CRC Press, 1991
7. Jay Lehr, “Low-level radiation benefits health,” Environment & Climate News, August 2011