The Fallout Chronicles X - Where Does This Leave us?
The Fallout Chronicles X - Where does this leave us?
Gofman’s findings about the risks of low-level ionizing radiation, reported in the previous entry, have not been generally accepted by what he calls the “radiation community.” When it comes to low-level ionizing radiation, most Americans, I’d guess, even if they are not part of the “radiation community” Gofman defines, still believe what we were told by authorities from the beginning when it came to fallout: ionizing radiation below a certain threshold level is safe.
If we accept Gofman’s findings, as I think we should, we will realize that low-level ionizing radiation is never simply “safe.” We will no longer ask what the threshold is for safety but instead ask how much risk is attached to the doses we are experiencing.
Where does that leave us?
It leaves us having to accept the fact that some of us will get cancer from low-level ionizing radiation. Since it is low-level radiation, it leaves us having to accept the fact also that we are never going to know who of us is going to get cancer from this radiation, or when, or even, if we get cancer, that it was the low-level radiation that caused it. After sound epidemiological research is done, we can know the statistical probability, the numerical range of who will get it, but that’s all.
The baseline for the low-level radiation we will inescapably get is the amount of “background radiation” we all get, not all of us in the same amounts, but some of it, inescapably. The risk from that radiation is real, Gofman says. But since human beings have survived for as long as we have on earth, we know that natural background radiation is not going to give fatal cancer to all that many of us. Good news, that, since background radiation is inescapable.
We humans added to the amount of “background radiation” with the fallout we generated in the nuclear weapons tests we conducted in the atmosphere. Every country that conducted these tests added something to it. The good news is that we aren’t doing atmospheric testing any more. Other good news is that the levels of ionizing radiation from this fallout, unlike the levels from natural background radiation, will be declining through time.
Bad news here is that the radiation from fallout will be adding something to the “background” in our world for quite some time, more than the lifetimes of anyone alive today, certainly. Better news, though, is that it won’t be adding a whole lot, though more in some places than in others, in Utah, for example, downwind of the Nevada Test Site. And downwind of the Chernobyl reactor.
If it’s a comfort to anyone, when it comes to added man-made sources of low-level radiation in the environment, the situation in Russia and some other countries of the former Soviet Union is almost certainly much worse than it is in the U.S., even if the terrible reactor accident at Chernobyl is left out of the equation.
The levels of background radiation from fallout will continue to decline as long as we have
no further testing (or demonstration) of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere,
no use in a war of nuclear explosives or dirty bombs by terrorists or other nations or our own nation,
no successful attack with conventional weapons on facilities where nuclear waste is being stored,
no accident at a nuclear reactor, nuclear waste storage facility, nuclear fuel production facility, or weapons production facility that results in the release of fission products.
All these things could still occur. It’s hard to say what the likelihood is of them happening, but it is nowhere near zero.
So far we’ve been talking about radiation from fallout and from natural background radiation. What about other sources of low-level ionizing radiation that are human-made? These we might be able to do something about.
For most of us, the biggest doses will probably come from the medical uses of radiation—x-rays, CAT scans, radiation therapy, the diagnostic use of radioisotopes. We are given these doses on purpose, of course. They are decided upon by knowledgeable doctors and informed patients, we hope, because the benefits are taken to outweigh the increased risk of harm. If Gofman is right, every dose does increase the risk of harm. The increase in risk is presumably not enough to counter the benefit that can also be expected. Younger people run more risk here than older people, especially the very young.
After radioactivity was discovered at the turn of the nineteenth century, the health benefits of ionizing radiation were vastly overestimated in some circles and the harm it might do greatly underestimated. In the 20’s and 30’s, radium enemas enjoyed a vogue, despite warnings by scientists, including Marie Curie, the discoverer of radium. In the 30’s and 40’s, x-rays were assumed to have not just a diagnostic but also a therapeutic use. If they didn’t redden skin (Think sunburn), they were assumed to be harmless.
The history here is of a steadily growing appreciation of the downsides.
It is important to realize, finally, that doctors are members of what Gofman calls the radiation community. If a hospital and doctor can make money by ordering a CATscan in a close case, the inclination will be to order the CATscan, no matter how knowledgeable and ethically scrupulous the doctors and hospital. That’s just the way it is.
Other sources of human-made low-level ionizing radiation are “occupational.” The first example here should probably be the x-ray technicians, radiation oncologists—the people in the medical community who work with ionizing radiation. In the 30’s and 40’s, before the downsides were appreciated as they came to be later, these people often suffered from the amount of ionizing radiation they had absorbed. Protections are now more substantial. That’s what those lead aprons they give us are about and why the technicians leave the room or stand behind leaded glass when we get the x-rays.
We know from the oral histories of workers at Hanford, where plutonium was produced, that safety was a big concern. Workers were not permitted to get doses larger than what was thought to be safe. Here the problem was that these doses were not safe. Had the levels been set at levels now thought to be safe, production would have been adversely affected. Had they been set at the levels health physicists like Karl Morgan were recommending and John Gofman would recommend today, production might have been almost impossible. Imagine, no plutonium. Or a lot less of it anyway.
Other “occupational” doses will be experienced by uranium miners, by workers in nuclear reactors, and by workers doing cleanup at the various nuclear Superfund sites that were designated after the end of the Cold War, one of which was Hanford. Others were Fernald in Ohio where fuel elements were fabricated; the Savannah River plant in South Carolina, where plutonium and tritium were manufactured; the Rocky Flats Plant north of Denver, Colorado where plutonium pits were fabricated. All Superfund sites.
Of course the workers at the sites of nuclear power reactors can be expected to experience a higher amount of low-level radiation than the rest of us do.
Certain environments might be expected to produce higher amounts of low-level ionizing radiation as a kind of background. The “fallout areas” in Utah, perhaps. The housing developments in the vicinity of the nuclear Superfund Sites. The vicinity of nuclear power reactors. The vicinity of the coal ash dumps of coal-fired power plants.
We can get ionizing radiation from building materials and from the food we eat and the water we drink. Maybe not much low-level ionizing radiation, but some. If Gofman is right, it all counts.
Finally, smoking. Did you know that smoking cigarettes sends low-level ionizing radiation into your lungs? That’s just one of the problems with it of course. I don’t know what the research says about smoking other things, marijuana for example.
It is still not always entirely clear how risk levels are increased by low-level ionizing radiation. Epidemiological research on the health effects of low-level ionizing radiation needs to be helped to continue.
Obviously, nothing like prevention can be hoped for here. Let’s hope, then, that a cure for cancer will be found. In the meantime, it looks like we must just soldier on, perhaps realizing, as the poet Joseph Brodsky said, “Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between Bad and Good, but between Bad and Worse.”
Grim? I don’t think so. I find it liberating.
Next: What is freedom for?