Talk:Radiation hormesis

Mammals in Chernobyl show far fewer deformities than any linear model predicts. Molecular studies of those mammals showed that they have high levels of special enzymes (so there actually is a known biological mechanism) that repair radiation damage quickly (before they complicate and become practically irreversible). Further research proved that it is exposure to radiation that triggers the production of those enzymes. Any linear model is thus comparable to a model of UV and skin cancer that only measures UV dose and ignores the protective effect of melanin production. This is supported by cancer statistics, while Chernobyl victims still show elevated frequency of slowly progressing cancer, their frequency of rapidly progressing cancer has returned to normal (in the still surviving) proving that the actual mutations behind the cancer happened due to the sudden dose peak and had nothing at all to do with long-term exposure to constant doses. But this is not quite the classical radiation hormesis hypothesis, rather a sudden dose rise (not total dose) is the risk factor theory.109.58.205.241 (talk) 15:45, 29 October 2011 (UTC)Martin J Sallberg
 * Source(s) linkies? Scream!! (talk) 15:54, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Overview of issue.
Hormesis isn't only what the article claims it to be, but also a pseudo-scientific hydra of 'radiation is good for you because it does X' hypotheses that grows new heads when you cut old off, like other pseudoscience.

The particular head described in this article (the cells detecting radiation-caused DNA damage and activating repair), is referencing a real effect in the sense that there are repair responses that activate, but one easily shown irrelevant to near-background levels by replacing the fuzzy and abstract green glowing 'radiation' with concrete 'probability of a particle track event' (or nucleus recoil event), which the cell can not detect other than by counting, and which come in rarely at near background levels (a cell, due to its tiny size, makes awfully bad Geiger counter; the nucleus, especially so). On top of that, at background dose rates, vast majority of mutations are endogenous, i.e. not caused by radiation. I've added links for that.

Unfortunately the hydra has grown new heads like 'radiation stimulates immune system', for which you can't apply the argument, albeit you can note that stimulating immune system is not automatically good thing, see autoimmune disorders; if the immune system keeps some reserves when radiation is not there, one ought to think sometime in the past the individuals that simply had their immune system constantly in the 'stimulated' state, did win quite significant Darwin award, i.e. died out well enough to evolve the radiation-detection-modulated response and keep it safe from genetic drift.

Typical pseudoscience there: formulate a proposed effect, which, if exist, got huge monetary impact, make up some slightly plausible justifications that appeal to 'common sense' where the radiation softly glows fuzzy green, and immune system sounds like the thing that you want to be stimulating for fun. Complete with a claim that nearly 50% of studies of very low dose effects did find 'some' hormesis effects, so that those un-initiated to statistics would take noise as evidence. They pick some real effect that is vaguely parallel, and try to link it with pseudoscience by hijacking the name. 78.60.253.249 (talk) 19:12, 18 March 2012 (UTC) That was me, by the way. Dmytry (talk) 22:02, 30 March 2012 (UTC)


 * What you wrote ignores important epidemiological findings:
 * Nuclear Shipyard Worker Study - the group that worked with nuclear-powered vessels had significantly lower cancer mortality than the control group, which worked in the same shipyard.
 * Cohen's radon studies - radon exposure in U.S. counties is inversely correlated with lung cancer rates. Correlations between radon exposure and smoking explain only 3% of the discrepancy with LNT.
 * Radiation hormesis was first postulated with respect to those findings. The proposed biological mechanisms are secondary. --Tweenk (talk) 01:26, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Which is adequately explained by poor control for other environmental factors, without proposing that the cells could somehow sense low probability of being struck. Dmytry (talk) 14:10, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Another piece of data that was omitted was the Taiwan apartment building exposure (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2477708/). Certainly this is not in any way a final word on this subject, but there does appear to be some rationale for the proposition that low dose rate radiation exposure, even if the total exposures are relatively large, at worst does not result in health effects according to LNT and may reflect hormesis. I understand the nature of retrospective analysis vs. prospective studies, but the definitive prospective study is unlikely to be done. It is even possible to imagine (this is hypothesis, not data) that low dose rate exposure might result in damage at rates low enough that cellular repair mechanisms can keep up. Higher rate exposures, even with lower totals, may be more damaging due to the large number of multiple damage sites appearing simultaneously. None of this should be taken to mean that "radiation is good for you" in any general way (Ann Coulter to the contrary). It may mean, however, that effects of radiation exposure on complex organisms at low dose rates may be more complicated than we understand at present.

I also think it's odd that the Feinendegen article was used to support a specific physics/biology point attempting to refute the likelihood of the efficacy of damage for doses near background while the primary point of that article was to enumerate evidence that supports the idea of hormesis. Ludwig Feinendegen is a respected guy in the health physics community. Why ignore this? Has Ann Coulter's support tainted the whole idea? Agnostician (talk) 22:01, 19 May 2016 (UTC)