What the greens got wrong

[TimberWolf]

So you have no fear of living on top of granite and breathing in Radon?

I don't think people living on or near granite develop more cancers. Granite is all over the place anyway.

[BlasterBates]

Some scientists actually went ahead and did some investigation into radiation on health. They went to Chernobyl and found that the death rate amongst the inhabitants was no higher than anywhere else, that the high incidence of thyroid tumours was probably not cancer but just the normal variation in size of thyroid glands that no-one had ever really investigated before, i.e. plenty people live normal lives with an enlarged thyroid gland, but had never been picked up before.

Animals living in the contaminated area, were perfectly healthy.

They went to an Iranian town with a high level of background radiation, not sure what it was caused by, and found the life expectancy higher than elsewhere. They found this also in other places.

They investigated why people living in places with high background radiation and found there was a difference in their blood, which seemed to be caused by the radiation, and was beneficial. Experiments confirmed the changes.

One of their conclusions was that a certain level of background radiation is actually beneficial. It seems that organisms have evolved to accept low levels of radiation and like sunlight a bit of it does you good.

One of the reasons why there was a panic about radiation, was that scientists at the time had very good data on the effects of radiation at high dose levels but not low levels, so they simply extrapolated the the straight line between exposure and life expectancy to low levels. It now appears this was totally incorrect and in fact it should be a slight positive curve before turning negative at some higher level.

This whole anti-nuclear movement is based largely on a scientific mistake. In other words they had it right in the 1930's a bit radium-cream would probably do you good.

Stanley Watras is probably not dead, and as a result of the radon is more likely to live to a ripe old age, just like the inhabitants of the Iranian town, who are exposed to the highest background levels of radiation in the world.

[Doggy Styles]

Do they mean all the 'isotope' radiation is good for us? Alpha particles, beta particles and gamma rays?

What about Yobba rays?