Can Low Doses of Radiation Cause More Damage than High Doses?

The New York Times' Matthew Wald reports today:

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists['] May-June issue carries seven articles and an editorial on the subject of low-dose radiation, a problem that has thus far defied scientific consensus but has assumed renewed importance since the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors in Japan in March 2011.

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This month a guest editor, Jan Beyea [who received a PhD in nuclear physics from Columbia and has served on a number of committees at the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science] and worked on epidemiological studies at Three Mile Island, takes a hard look at the power industry.

The bulletin's Web site is generally subscription-only, but this issue can be read at no charge.

Dr. Beyea challenges a concept adopted by American safety regulators about small doses of radiation. The prevailing theory is that the relationship between dose and effect is linear - that is, that if a big dose is bad for you, half that dose is half that bad, and a quarter of that dose is one-quarter as bad, and a millionth of that dose is one-millionth as bad, with no level being harmless.

The idea is known as the "linear no-threshold hypothesis,'' and while most scientists say there is no way to measure its validity at the lower end, applying it constitutes a conservative approach to public safety.

Some radiation professionals disagree, arguing that there is no reason to protect against supposed effects that cannot be measured. But Dr. Beyea contends that small doses could actually be disproportionately worse.

Radiation experts have formed a consensus that if a given dose of radiation delivered over a short period poses a given hazard, that hazard will be smaller if the dose is spread out. To use an imprecise analogy, if swallowing an entire bottle of aspirin at one sitting could kill you, consuming it over a few days might merely make you sick.

In radiation studies, this is called a dose rate effectiveness factor. Generally, a spread-out dose is judged to be half as harmful as a dose given all at once.

Following on the heels of pink slime, mad cow disease (AKA bovine spongiform encephalopathy - or BSE) is back this week after a California dairy cow destined for a rendering plant that makes pet food was found to have the disease. So far, it looks like the beef industry is playing down the finding, hoping to dodge a loss in sales at home and abroad. The U.S. Department of Agriculture was quick to tell Americans that our food supply is entirely safe.

But the re-emergence of mad cow and the conversation around pink slime has re-opened questions about our food system. It has exposed how food safety falls inevitably through the cracks in a country where over 9 billion animals are being slaughtered per year and budgets for the departments that oversee these processes are being slashed. The incredible media coverage of both issues reflects a growing consumer interest in more transparency in what we're eating and how it's being produced.

A close inspection of the nutrition label on most processed foods will usually turn up - among other disturbingly-named ingredients whose function is unclear - something known as "hydrolyzed soy protein" or "hydrolyzed wheat protein".

What is it, and why is it added to so many processed food products?

What Is Protein, Anyway?

"Protein" is a generic term for an animal or plant tissue made out of individual proteins. These individual "proteins" are just long chains of amino acids linked together, end to end.

There are 20 amino acids in our genetic code, each an individual molecule with its own shape - and the sequence of amino acids in a protein determines its three-dimensional shape. Our cells can build anything from collagen to digestive enzymes out of the correct sequence of amino acids!

A short protein is called a "peptide", but there's no set number of amino acids under which the term is used. Calling a protein a "peptide" is like calling a person "short": it's a relative judgment.

Minerals are the pervasive and ubiquitous catalysts for cellular functions. Some minerals function to increase the electrical potential of cells. Other minerals function as metalloenzymes, which then can act as enzyme reactors in cells, signal transducers and messengers. In human nutrition, minerals play pivotal roles in the body's multitude of functions. Aberrations in mineral activity, and nutrient mineral deficiencies are common among degenerative conditions.

While chlorpyrifos is no longer registered for household use in the US, it continues to be widely used around the world, as well as on many food and agricultural products throughout the US.

Even low to moderate levels of exposure to the insecticide chlorpyrifos during pregnancy may lead to long-term, potentially irreversible changes in the brain structure of the child, according to a new brain imaging study by researchers from the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health at the Mailman School of Public Health, Duke University Medical Center, Emory University, and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. The changes in brain structure are consistent with cognitive deficits found in children exposed to this chemical.

Results of the study appear online in the April 30 PNAS.

Research revealing the broad spectrum toxicity of statin drugs continues to accumulate unabated. A new study reveals that these cholesterol-lowering drugs may be contributing to an epidemic of arthritis and autoimmunity in exposed populations, adding to a growing body of clinical evidence that they may cause over 300 adverse health effects.

Harlan Krumholz is a professor of medicine and cardiologist at the at Yale University School of Medicine. He recently co-authored an open letter which appeared in the journal circulation (pdf here). The letter was written to the Adult Treatment Panel - a group of 'experts' charged with setting cholesterol guidelines for the American public. The panel is current considering this issue and is due to report later this year.

I suspect the panel, like a multitude of panels before it, will recommend that we keep strong downward pressure on our cholesterol numbers. But not all individuals in the medical and scientific community agree with this approach. One such dissenter is Professor Krumholz.

An epidemic similar to that of "crack babies" in the early 90s may be resurfacing, with the number of infants being born addicted to prescription painkillers increasing fivefold since 2000.

According to a new study released Monday, babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome - exposure to addictive drugs while in the mother's womb - are increasingly addicted to Oxycodone, Vicodin, Heroin or opiates and can suffer from seizures, breathing problems, difficulty feeding and inconsolability, according to Stephen Patrick, a neonatal-perinatal medicine fellow at the University of Michigan and lead author of the report.

"Opiate painkillers are the new epidemic," he says. "It's becoming a problem. We need to increase attention from a public health perspective and talk about how we deal with opiates and the way they're prescribed."

The addiction is rarely if ever fatal, but treatment of the 13,000 "Oxy Babies" born addicted to painkillers in 2009 cost more than $720 million. About 80 percent of affected infants were on Medicaid, according to Patrick's report.

The Centers for Disease Control estimates that the death toll from overdoses of prescription painkillers has tripled over the past several years. About 12 million Americans - about 1 in 20 teenagers and adults - use prescription painkillers in a way that's not prescribed.

What do you and your family eat each week? You may be shocked to see the significant variation even between relatively 'similar' nations when it comes to diet. While many families within the United States and Mexico include fast food and soda into the core of their nutritional program, families from nations like Bhutan survive off of traditional base food items like vegetables and grains. It is easy to see why disease rates are skyrocketing in many developed countries, where nutrition is not held to a very high regard.

Amazingly, the United States also spends more on healthcare than any nation in the world. Despite spending $7,960 per capita, the United States has been ranked dead last when it comes to the quality of care. The fact of the matter is that when food intake is ignored - along with the subsequent toxic ingredients that go along with the processed food addiction - disease will arise. In the telling pictures below, taken from the book Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, you can see what the average family from each nation eats over the period of one week.

North Carolina, United States

This family from North Carolina eats a diet almost entirely of processed and pre-prepared foods with heavy amounts of junk and fast food. Consuming mostly sugar-laden 'fruit' drinks and mega-sized sodas from Burger King and McDonald's, this average American diet will ultimately lead to chronic disease and rampant sickness. Some favorite foods include pizza and fast food.

Unknown to the public at large, many vitamins today are produced through total chemical synthesis - a process whereby a complex organic molecule is synthesized from simpler, petrochemical-derived precursors, usually without the aid of a biological process.

What this means is that many vitamins are essentially being produced from oil. Despite sharing certain chemical resemblances with the nutrients they were designed to be technical facsimiles of, these pseudo-vitamins are being consumed at the rate of millions of lbs annually - and often sold to the consumer as "all natural." .

One of the more disturbing permutations of oil-derived "vitamins" is retinyl palmitate (also known as vitamin A palmitate), a synthetic vitamin form of vitamin A. It has been linked to birth defects in a wide range of animal studies. Some of this research you can view first hand on GreenMedInfo.com. For additional verification the Environmental Working Groups' website Skin Deep lists a wide range of scientific references and has determined that it has a high risk for developmental and reproductive toxicity.

A human study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1995 showed that women who consumed 10,000 IU of preformed vitamin A from supplements per day had 4.8 times the rate of birth defects than those who consumed 5,000 IU per day while pregnant. The increased frequency of defects was concentrated among babies born to women who consumed high levels of vitamin A before the seventh week of gestation.²