DV82XL said:

The proper analog here is sunlight: a little bit of broad spectrum light exposure is good for you; too much will damage you. While I am not a huge supporter of the idea of hormesis in that I don’t think it would be good to drink ‘radium water’, the fact remains that the evidence that there is some health benefit to low level exposure to ionizing radiation is firm.

Yes that matches a memory of a paper I read long ago that indicated that slightly higher exposure to radiation than most people encounter is actually good for you. Mind you this was years and years ago I read it.

Let me see I believe the study compared people living at high elevations and in areas with higher background radiation from natural sources. The point being that people living at higher elevations experience a higher than normal exposure to solar radiation. And that there are places were the natural background radiation is higher because of various environmental factors. I think Boulder City, Colorado was one of the places used.

Anyway without the paper to reference it could also be related to other factors not considered in the paper. For example maybe the elevation itself is the factor and not the radiation.

So while there may be some support for the idea that higher levels of radiation might be good for you, I’m not planning to run out and irradiate myself.

        DV82XL said:

I strongly suggest that you research this matter in more depth yourself. I try and avoid giving links in these discussions anymore because a lot of time is wasted I found with exchanging pointers to papers on ether side of the question and not much analysis of the subject. I now suggest that you go and find the material yourself and try and make a balance evaluation of the evidence available, and then, if you wish, we can discuss the technical questions they raise.

Thanks for this reply. I will spend a bit more time looking at both sides of the argument.

        Nescio said:

“For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert” as a great man once said.

That this seems to be true is almost undeniable. And yet… I think general belief in this is leading us into more and more problems. Combined with the general distrust of government & authority that arose in the 1950s and especially in the 1960s, many many people think they are better off trusting their own beliefs, compared to listening to experts. In fact, ‘expert’ frequently has negative connotations (how many times have you heard or read, “… xxxx according to the ’so-called experts’…”?).

        Nescio said:

Personally I think the idea of radiation hormesis is analogous to shooting a few of your neighbours in the hope that an increased police presence in the area will reduce crime.

Hmm… or it might be like thinking that if you occasionally stress your muscles by lifting weights, it will cause them to grow and be healthier than not doing so. This despite the fact that if you try hard enough to lift a weight beyond your capability, you can tear your muscle tissue, sever tendons and otherwise injure yourself.

Anyway, based on the evidence for homeostasis, I’d say that personally, I find the evidence compelling but not quite definitive. I’m not willing to say that there is proof positive radiation is beneficial in general, but I am willing to say that it is highly probable that it is. I suppose we could argue all day about what constitutes being “sure” of something and what constitutes just finding it to be very probable.

I hesitate to go to the level of recomending anyone expose themselves to radiation intentionally because of a perceived benefit. I don’t know that the optimal level is the same for everyone or that we have a clear idea what the optimal exposure duration, intensity and method are (dose rate aside, the more complex question would be how that dose is distributed and how that might effect things).

I’m not at all comfortable with the idea of untrained people seeking out x-rays or sitting in randon chambers for perceived benefits, especially given that they could cause harm if their math is a little off or something.

However, while I don’t believe the evidence or information exists to the point of telling people to go look for radiation exposure, I do think that the case is solid enough to tell people not to worry about taking any action to avoid things like dental x-rays or granite counter tops.

This of course does not prove radiation hormesis is a valid hypothesis in and of itself however the Nussbaum and Köhnlein paper you linked to does not refute it ether, being a diatribe against research done that fails to support the LNT model that cherry-picks data from selected studies to hold up as being representative of all research done on the matter.

The evidence against the linear model has been solid as a rock for 40 years. Yet the LNT model prevails. Why? Follow the money and the politics. The health-physics community is divided, roughly along the lines of who puts money before principles. There have been some amazingly bitter fights within the Health Physics Society on the topic. Health physicists found that their livelihood depended upon scaring funds out of governments and science became irrelevant if the paymasters wanted to mislead the public about the hazards of radiation. If a particular study failed to find evidence of radiation’s ill effects, the data was simply forced into the LNT model. As a result radiophones and the politicians took a false rule of thumb and enshrined it in law and regulation. This then resulted in a lot of stupid but expensive procedures where people and vendors can make a lot of money thus entrenching this false standard through special interests.

I strongly suggest that you research this matter in more depth yourself. I try and avoid giving links in these discussions anymore because a lot of time is wasted I found with exchanging pointers to papers on ether side of the question and not much analysis of the subject. I now suggest that you go and find the material yourself and try and make a balance evaluation of the evidence available, and then, if you wish, we can discuss the technical questions they raise.

        DV82XL said:

The proper analog here is sunlight: a little bit of broad spectrum light exposure is good for you; too much will damage you. While I am not a huge supporter of the idea of hormesis in that I don’t think it would be good to drink ‘radium water’, the fact remains that the evidence that there is some health benefit to low level exposure to ionizing radiation is firm.

I’m not so sure about that myself, and I tend to disagree about the analogy. Sunlight causes an increase in vitamin D-3 levels which is beneficial, but it also causes DNA damage that leads to sunburn and an increased risk of skin cancer – we are looking at two separate effects of sunlight, one beneficial, one damaging. It has been argued that the benefits of increased D-3 levels outweigh the damage caused, though others disagree: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_tanning#Tanning_controversy. If it was not for sunlight stimulating D-3 I think few would argue it had any benefits, apart from aesthetic ones.

Ionising radiation has no known benefits such as stimulating D-3, and either misses the nucleus and has no effect, or damages DNA, admittedly stimulating DNA repair mechanisms (the putative cause of radiation hormesis), but these are not 100% effective. To quote John Gofman, “The lowest dose of ionizing radiation is one nuclear track through one cell. You can’t have a fraction of a dose of that sort. Either a track goes through the nucleus and affects it, or it doesn’t.” There’s an interview with Gofman here where he discusses this: http://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/synapse.html

This article is also worth a read, I think, and describes radiation hormesis as a scientifically refuted but stubborn myth: http://www.gfstrahlenschutz.de/docs/hormeng2.pdf

On the other hand there are many sites where it is equally convincingly argued that ionising radiation is good for you, in moderation of course. To be honest, I recently gave myself a bit of a headache trying to decide which argument has the most merit. “For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert” as a great man once said.

        Nescio said:

Personally I think the idea of radiation hormesis is analogous to shooting a few of your neighbors in the hope that an increased police presence in the area will reduce crime.

The proper analog here is sunlight: a little bit of broad spectrum light exposure is good for you; too much will damage you. While I am not a huge supporter of the idea of hormesis in that I don’t think it would be good to drink ‘radium water’, the fact remains that the evidence that there is some health benefit to low level exposure to ionizing radiation is firm.