The equivalent is trying to build a theory of everything from scratch, and then testing it against ‘everything’

The LNT model is simply a statistical approach to how much cancer seems to be caused by radiation, with a nod to erring on the side of caution. Anyone who works in radiation physics KNOWS that it is not the whole story, but in macro scales (like humans) it is a very successful approximation, that also works as a worst case scenario, because while the effects if radiation may be better, unless you are making some giant cognitive leaps like Mr Bramhall, it shouldn’t be any worse

What you are saying are good reasons to examine hormesis.

And when BEIR VII did so, they found the LNT model was the best model to describe radiation effects.

There is nothing you’ve said that they weren’t aware of.

There are multiple things going on, and the baseline is not zero. When the treatment (radiation exposure) both causes damage and induces repair of damage, the net after damage and after repair is not a linear combination because the underlying phenomena are non-linear.

What physiology is linear over multiple orders of magnitude? If 50% of bones break at a 1000 pound load, do 5% break at 100 pounds? Do 0.5% break at 10 pounds?

2 billion years ago when organisms evolved these DNA repair enzymes, the K40 level was 10x higher.

What you are stating about the LNT is not quite correct. The LNT model is a macro view of dose versus response. The underlying details are irrelevant. Either a response (cancer induction) increases linearly with dose or it does not.

The best model which fits this macro view is the LNT. BEIR VII investigated this…they considered DNA repair, and dose rate effects and hormesis, and still concluded the LNT is the best model of response versus dose.

http://www.dose-response.org/

The premise of the LNT model is that there is no DNA repair (known to be false), and that dose rate has no effect, only the total integrated dose (also known to be false).

Many of the physiological changes that occur during radiation exposure (induction of antioxidant defenses and DNA repair enzymes) also occur during other types of stress including exercise and exposure to things like resveratrol.

Fortunately I heard that these accidents rarely happen, and when they do its all ok. For instance, I read about one of the japanese workers saying it was all ok, because after he put his raincoat on, and went into the heavily leaking reactor, when he came out, they washed it all off?!?!

Doesn’t that sound just like the guys who watched the atom bomb tests just turning their backs on the blast (because the flash was so bright), then waiting a few moments before turning around (while wearing protective cotton shirts and shorts.

Haven’t we come a long way? We are just really lucky that they have solved that pesky nuclear waste issue once and for all!

It is based on linear energy transfer (LET) – the amount of ionising energy the particle deposits over a certain length of material. This is actually the exact concept you are talking about – the energy density of the radiation

Most of the time this is proportional to cell death, but also cancer risk, which is why we use it. An alpha deposits 20 times as much energy over a short distance than a beta or gamma, so they are biologically more dangerous. 20 times more dangerous. For cell death AND cancer

So what you are concerned about is already taken into account

To Mr Bramhall, I honestly never expected you to come here, and to be honest I would have been a little more diplomatic if I had known you would, although I stand behind what I have said. I will say you do sound less ‘science-impaired’ in your post here!

Cancer generation is a stochastic phenomenon. This means in large scale systems like human bodies the exact ‘how’ of radiation deposition is almost irrelevant. If you can link me to any literature that shows a 500mSv dose to a single cell means sweet FA I will be glad to back down here, but it doesnt.

Dose levels are considered across the tissue or body, because statistical likelihood means next to nothing for a single cell.

To illustrate the current understanding is there is a 5% risk of cancer per sievert of whole body dose. By your thought process if I understand it, a single cell being hit by an alphas particle should somehow equate to a 50% risk of cancer in that cell, or at least a higher risk than the current standards predict, because it recieved half a sievert.

This is demonstrably untrue. Radiologists performing interventional procedures can recieve 100s of millisieverts to their arms, but have essentially no change in cancer risk. That is just one example.

Cancer risk, as a statistical model, only works by invoking whole body doses. If you get a smaller area irradiated we use tissue weighting factors to convert that to a whole body dose. It is a statistical model, that simply says “if this much [tissue type] gets irradiated, this much cancer will be caused across a population.

All of the data supports this method, and the governing bodies update the tissue weighting factors as more evidence emerges.

To try and take a probabilistic model and say it is wrong because it doesn’t describe individual particle interactions is like doing a large cohort study and then dismissing it because it doesn’t describe “anecdote A”.

Cheers