Here is one of the most interesting things I’ve read all month; MOLECULAR BIOLOGY, EPIDEMIOLOGY, AND THE DEMISE OF THE LINEAR NO-THRESHOLD HYPOTHESIS. The author is from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the article is cited 52 times according to Google Scholar.
First things first, what is the linear no-threshold hypothesis? According to Wiki it is a model which says:
radiation is always considered harmful with no safety threshold, and the sum of several very small exposures are considered to have the same effect as one larger exposure (response linearity)
The abstract of the paper also contains a definition:
The LNT hypothesis is the basic principle of all radiation protection policy. This theory
assumes that all radiation doses, even those close to zero, are harmful in linear proportion
to dose and that all doses produce a proportionate number of harmful mutations i.e. miss or unrepaired DNA alterations
In contrast is the scientific view (he mentions studies later on)
High-dose radiation injures this biosystem with associated risk increments of mortality
and cancer mortality. Low-dose radiation stimulates DNA damage-control with associated
epidemiologic observations of risk decrements of mortality and cancer mortality, i.e.,
hormesis.
Hormesis? What is that? Back to my good friend Wiki: 
the term for generally favorable biological responses to low exposures to toxins and other stressors. A pollutant or toxin showing hormesis thus has the opposite effect in small doses as in large doses.
Rule of thumb: the dose makes the poison. Interpretation: nothing is poison until you consume too much of it.
How did we get it wrong? He gives two answers – Democratic irrationality and special interests.
How can this 40-year-old LNT paradigm continue to be the operative principle of radiation protection policy despite the contradictory scientific observations of both molecular biology and epidemiology and the lack of any supportive human data? The increase of public fear through repeated statements of deaths caused by “deadly” radiation has engendered an enormous increase in expenditures now required to “protect” the public from all applications of nuclear technology: medical, research, energy, disposal, and cleanup remediation. Government funds are allocated to appointed committees, the research they support, and to multiple environmental and regulatory agencies. The LNT theory and multibillion dollar radiation activities have now become a symbiotic self-sustaining political and economic force.
Now the body of the paper. This is a bit longer, so hold onto your hats.
Obviously high doses are dangerous. The best example comes from the radiation from the atomic bombs,
The best scientific evidence of human radiation effects initially came from epidemiologic studies of atomic bomb survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While no evidence of genetic effects has been found, these studies showed a roughly linear relationship between the induction of cancer and extremely high dose-rate, single high doses of atomic bomb radiation…
This hypothesis that all radiation is harmful in linear proportion to the dose, is the principle used for collective dose calculations of the number of deaths produced by any radiation, natural or generated, no matter how small.
Note to self: be skeptical of “official” data on deaths caused by nuclear radiation.
Our bodies are adaptive to low doses of radiation, actually making us healthier, even though high doses break our bodies apart.
For several decades increased longevity and decreased cancer mortality have been reported
in populations exposed to high background radiation. Established radiation protection authorities
consider such observations to be spurious or inconclusive because of unreliable public health data or undetermined confounding factors such as pollution of air, water and food, smoking, income, education, medical care, population density, and other socioeconomic variables. Recently, however, several epidemiologic, statistically significant, controlled studies have demonstrated that exposure to low or intermediate levels of radiation are associated with positive health effects.
A natural experiment from the Soviet Union after a thermal explosion in 1957: (A cGy is a unit of absorbed radiation dose equal to one hundredth (10−2) of a gray):
7852 persons living in 22 villages in the Eastern Urals were divided into three exposure groups averaging 49.6 cGy, 12.0 cGy, and 4.0 cGy and followed for 30 years. Tumor-related mortality was 28%, 30%, and 27% lower in the 49.6 cGy, 12.00 cGy, and 4.0 cGy groups, respectively, than in the nonirradiated control population in the same region. In the 49.6 cGy and 12.0 cGy groups the difference from the controls was statistically significant
There was a thermal explosion. 7852 people in villages nearby were effected by radiation. Those people were less likely to die from tumor related illness than in populations in the same region not exposed to radiation.
He cites another one from Japan after the Atomic bomb detonation. He also brings up radon dial painters and radon spas. Radon is highly radioactive according to wiki.
Included are the apparently
beneficial effects of low doses of external gamma rays on the life span of radium-dial painters and the significantly lower mortality from cancers at all sites of residents of Misasa, an urban area with radon spas, than residents of the suburbs of Misasa
From what I read the Radium Dial Painters were working women who painted hands and faces of clocks with radium paint. It turned into a big workers rights scandal after several of them died early deaths. Of course, they were licking their paintbrushes, so we’re not talking about small doses anymore. For radium dial painters in general, Kohen found the opposite effect.
On a side note, I’m not sure it is the employers fault for not warning their workers not to eat paint. I’m just saying.
More studies showing benefits to low rates or radiation:
The 1601 counties selected for adequate permanence of residence
provide extremely high-power statistical analysis. After applying the National Academy of Sciences BEIR IV correction for variations in smoking frequency (NAS 1988), the study shows a very strong tendency for lung cancer mortality to decrease with increasing mean radon level in homes
A 13 year nuclear shipyard worker study:
From the database of almost 700,000 shipyard workers, including about
108,000 nuclear workers, three study groups were selected, consisting of 28,542 nuclear workers with working lifetime doses >5 mSv (many received doses well in excess of 50 mSv), 10,462 nuclear workers with doses <5 mSv and 33,352 non-nuclear workers. Deaths in each of the groups were classified as due to: all causes, leukemia, lymphatic and hematopoietic cancers, mesothelioma, and lung cancer. The results demonstrated a statistically significant decrease in the standardized mortality ratio for the two groups of nuclear workers for ‘death from all causes’ compared with the non-nuclear workers. For the
>5 mSv group of nuclear workers, the highly significant risk decrement to 0.76The non-nuclear workers and the nuclear workers were similarly selected for employment, were afforded the same health care thereafter, and performed the identical type of work, except for exposure to 60Co gamma radiation, with a similar median age of entry into employment of about 34 years. This provides evidence with extremely high statistical power that low levels of ionizing radiation are associated with risk decrements.
Another study from nuclear workers in the U.S. Canada and Europe concludes,
“There was no evidence of an association between radiation dose and mortality from all
causes or from all cancers. Mortality from leukemia, excluding chronic, lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)... was significantly associated with cumulative external radiation dose
He also quotes a breast cancer study which includes 31,000 women. Based on the linear model, the author of the study “includes only non-significant data and excludes the data with the highest confidence limits”, and in so doing comes to the conclusion that low radiation exposure has mortality effects. But,
The observed data, however, demonstrates with high statistical confidence, a
reduction of the relative risk of breast cancer to 0.66 (P = 0.05) at 15 cGy and 0.85 (P = 0.32) at 25 cGy. The study actually predicts that a dose of 15 cGy would be associated with 7,000 fewer deaths in these million women.
The concluding paragraph:
Scientific understanding of the positive health effects produced by adaptive responses to low-level
radiation would result in a realistic assessment of the environmental risk of radiation. Instead of
adhering to non-scientific influences on radiation protection standards and practice (Taylor, 1980) that impair health care, research, and other benefits of nuclear technology, and waste many billions of dollars annually for protection against theoretical risks, these resources could be used productively for effective health measures and many other benefits to society.
