I first heard about the LNT (linear non-threshold theory) of the health effects of radiation exposure via Prof. Lenz’s blog (I couldn’t find a search function on the blog, but here are a couple of items that came up in a Yahoo search: Bernard Cohen on LNT junk science and Nobuo Ikeda on LNT and economics. I recall coming across an article about Gofman that claimed he had skewed the results of his experiments in order to make LNT more persuasive: he was dead against atmospheric testing, and his research had profound effects on its discontinuation. Didn’t log the link, tho. If readers can help, I’d be grateful.

I’m not competent to judge, of course, but I notice the existence of the concept of hormesis (and another article  here), by Art Robinson, a former colleague of Linus Pauling.

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley Lab, through a combination of time-lapse live imaging and mathematical modeling of a special line of human breast cells, have found evidence to suggest that for low dose levels of ionizing radiation, cancer risks may not be directly proportional to dose. This contradicts the standard model for predicting biological damage from ionizing radiation – the linear-no-threshold hypothesis or LNT – which holds that risk is directly proportional to dose at all levels of irradiation.“Our data show that at lower doses of ionizing radiation, DNA repair mechanisms work much better than at higher doses,” says Mina Bissell, a world-renowned breast cancer researcher with Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division. “This non-linear DNA damage response casts doubt on the general assumption that any amount of ionizing radiation is harmful and additive.”

via New Take on Impacts of Low Dose Radiation « Berkeley Lab News Center.

Tags: Health, Lenz, radiation