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Comment by throwaway_pdp09 | Hacker News Reader

> Oh yeah I didn't mean to imply that the fringe group numbers are not published

"they disagree with me so they must be fringe"

> Ramsar, Iran has ~200 mSv/year background

from wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar%2C_Mazandaran "Record levels were found in a house where the effective radiation dose due to external radiation was 131 mSv/a, and the committed dose from radon was 72 mSv/a.[8] This unique case..." Note the word unique.

So your claim for that area is in fact higher than the highest single location they found (one house), as I read it.

> See recommendation 1e

I would if I could find it. "1e" doesn't appear in that document. Could you quote it for us? Thanks.

> The UNSCEAR team also stopped saying...

Specifically, where?

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> "they disagree with me so they must be fringe"

That is not what I am saying. I am saying that they disagree with vast institutions of scientists who explain quite clearly in the above-linked report why they are wrong.

Regarding different background levels, I'm sorry if my numbers were not precise (I was reading them off of this DOE chart [1]), but the point remains that there are variation across at least 1 and almost 2 orders of magnitude in the world's natural radiation at dose rates far higher than what Greenpeace has used to make shocking Chernobyl estimates that can be used to robustly throw out the high-number estimates anti-nuclear institutions have used for years to scare people.

Does that make sense? Greenpeace is literally taking dose rates lower than US average background and saying that any increment even below that level will cause more Chernobyl deaths. This is unjustifiable by any stretch of any imagination.

Happy to quote. Sorry about not being specific enough about where it was. I even got the section wrong. The quote is from page 10 in the report (pg 18 in the pdf). Section 3.1.f:

"In general, increases in the incidence of health effects in populations cannot be attributed reliably to chronic exposure to radiation at levels that are typical of the global average background levels of radiation. This is because of the uncertainties associated with the assessment of risks at low doses, the current absence of radiation-specific biomarkers for health effects and the insufficient statistical power of epidemiological studies. Therefore, the Scientific Committee does not recommend multiplying very low doses by large numbers of individuals to estimate numbers of radiation-induced health effects within a population exposed to incremental doses at levels equivalent to or lower than natural background levels; "

[1] https://i.imgur.com/TDaZI08.jpg Dose chart (sourced from https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2018/01/f46/doe-ioni...)

Thank you for clarifying.

People have a ~50% chance of developing cancer and a ~20% chance of dying from cancer in their lifetimes. This means there are vast numbers of people very close to getting cancer at any time and there is no population wide safe exposure level.

To actually disprove the theory you need an experiment that can detect changes in cancer rate on the order of 40k per billion or 0.004% which have simply not been preformed.

Saying ‘we can’t measure it therefore it does not exist’ might be acceptable if it where the oldest theory. Except it’s not, people want to overthrow the existing idea with zero direct supporting evidence which is simply unscientific. If you want to supplant a theory then it’s on you to provide evidence that the existing theory is wrong, otherwise I can say low exposure levels are more dangerous because high levels result in multiple indecent cancers at the same time in some people. Therefore the risks increase at lower levels do to probability theory and we already agreed no evidence was needed.

PS: I am not saying my example is correct, just the argument your making is faulty.

> To actually disprove the theory you need an experiment that can detect changes in cancer rate on the order of 40k per billion or 0.004% which have simply not been preformed.

If the LNT model was correct then you wouldn't need such a high level of precision, only a sample group with more radiation exposure (i.e. a medium level rather than low or high), so that the LNT model would predict that enough people would get cancer that it could actually be measured. If the people in those areas don't have an incidence of cancer which is linear with respect to the very high doses currently being used as the baseline then the LNT model is falsified.

> Saying ‘we can’t measure it therefore it does not exist’ might be acceptable if it where the oldest theory. Except it’s not, people want to overthrow the existing idea with zero direct supporting evidence which is simply unscientific.

By this logic we should be operating under the assumption that the Greek Gods actually exist because the theory is very old and it is difficult to measure.

The problem with this assumption is you can’t keep everything else identical. Population X and Y don’t grow up live and die in exactly identical areas expect for different radiation levels.

What you can do is control for as many factors as possible or use a proxy. It turns out skin cancer is a solid proxy, * and populations like Australia and skin cancer support the linear model down to the limits of our ability to detect it. But, then people want to suggest the non linear model kicks in as soon as the signal falls below the noise floor without evidence, even though that’s the same behavior in both models.

* As in you can detect population differences and work out whole body radiation dose equivalents.

PS: By this logic we should be operating under the assumption that the Greek Gods actually exist because the theory is very old and it is difficult to measure. People are promoting a new idea, not just trying to disprove an old one. Aka, Greek gods and the flying spaghetti monster have equal support. That’s absolutely fine, it’s saying some other untested theory is supported without evidence that’s at issue.

> The problem with this assumption is you can’t keep everything else identical. Population X and Y don’t grow up live and die in exactly identical areas expect for different radiation levels.

For most other things you would do a placebo controlled trial, but it might be hard to get people to sign up for a trial where you're giving them enough radiation to expect to cause a significant number of them to get cancer.

So controlling for confounders is really the only thing left if you want an answer.

And it works pretty well -- at least better than nothing -- if you actually want the answer. The problem with it is that it unfortunately can also produce whatever answer you want from a political perspective by reverse engineering which confounders to control for based on which ones shift toward the desired outcome, so you can't trust somebody else to do it for you without checking their work at a level of detail that basically amounts to redoing the analysis yourself.

> It turns out skin cancer is a solid proxy

Wait, what are you using it as a proxy for?

It’s a proxy for low level radiation exposure over time.

It’s not great, but skin cancer is more closely tied to radiation exposure rather than everything that can cause lung cancer etc.

Doesn't that require assuming the conclusion? If LNT is wrong then skin cancer shouldn't be linearly proportional to radiation exposure either.

Plus, you still have the same problem with confounders. Expect more skin cancer in a population that spends more time outside, but also potentially a very different lifestyle in that case.

And problems with radiation type as well, since many types of radiation don't penetrate the skin, so they could cause skin cancer but not other cancers. Which has implications for the fatality rate because skin cancer has a much higher survival rate than most other types.

You’re always stuck building a model and testing it in any case. The point is you don’t need to adjust for many common causes of cancer like smoking, so it’s a simpler model.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S05315...

In the german wikipedia edition 814 mSv/a is mentioned (based on the linked study) for Ramsar, Iran. To be fair, a comment has been added stating:

"Allerdings dürfte bei etwa 33.000 Einwohnern Ramsars die Kohortengröße von weit unter 5 % für die über 100 mSv/a Exponierten wahrscheinlich zu gering sein, um statistisch signifikante Gesundheitsfolgen festzustellen."

Translated: The size of the measured cohort of 33.000 inhabitants of Ramsar of less than 5% for >100 mSv/a exposed participants is probably too small to allow to derive statistically significant health-related conclusions.

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