Cindy Folkers and Ian Fairlie have written an essential book. The Scientists Who Alerted Us to the Dangers of Radiation presents the findings of 39 scientists who studied and raised alarms over the health effects of radiation exposure and who consequently suffered severe blowback from universities, government and industry. The scientists proved that radiation risks have “consistently been underestimated” for decades. Their findings angered both nuclear profiteers and research grant authorities.
From Linus Pauling, Alice Stewart, John Gofman, Karl Morgan and Ernest Sternglass, to Rosalie Bertell, Jay Gould, Steve Wing, Tim Mousseau, Kate Brown and Thomas Mancuso; authoritative scientific warnings have consistently found that official radiation exposure limits are grossly inadequate, dangerously unprotective, and help facilitate the plague of cancer and cancer deaths around the world.
The authors report, “[R]ecent epidemiology findings indicate that these radiation scientists were correct … but by larger margins than we had thought. For example, increased radiogenic risks are routinely ignored, the protections of children and women are not addressed, large dose/risk uncertainties are passed by, internal radiation exposures remain largely unexamined, cardiovascular risks ignored, and the hazards of common radionuclides are systematically minimized.”
Nine of the radiation scientists profiled in the book “observed increased incidences of childhood leukemias and solid cancers near U.S. nuclear facilities,” they note. For example, Dr. Jay M. “Gould often found that cancer and infant mortality rates climbed when reactors were activated, then began to drop when they were closed, a phenomenon he attributed to exposure to small but chronic exposures to radiation from their radioactive releases.”
“Indeed,” the authors report, “a strong pattern of epidemiological evidence indicates increased leukemia and solid cancer risks near all reactors world-wide, not just those in the U.S.”
The most important epidemiology study on chronic low-dose exposures was the German government’s 2008 KiKK study Childhood Cancer in the Vicinity of Nuclear Power Plants.* “This found a 120% increase in leukemias and a 60% increase in all cancers among infants and children under 5 years old living within 5 km of all German NPPs” (nuclear power plants).
“KiKK was a large well-conducted study; its findings were scientifically rigorous; its evidence was particularly strong; and the Germany government’s radiation protection agency (the BfS) which commissioned the study, confirmed its findings.” A BfS-appointed expert group said of it:
“The present study confirms that in Germany there is a correlation between the distance of the home from the nearest NPP [nuclear power plant] at the time of diagnosis and the risk of developing cancer (particularly leukemia) before the 5th birthday. This study is not able to state which biological risk factors could explain this relationship. Exposure to ionizing radiation was neither measured nor modelled.”
The authors report that, “The risks from NPP emissions to embryos/fetuses in pregnant women living nearby were apparently much larger than currently estimated. For example, [blood-forming] tissues are considerably more radiosensitive in embryos and fetuses than in adults. The combined immaturity of children’s nervous and blood-forming systems makes them particularly vulnerable to chronic radiation exposures from NPPs.”
This highly influential study ⸺ which was followed three years later by the catastrophic Fukushima-Daiichi triple reactor meltdowns in Japan ⸺ moved Germany’s government to phase out all 17 of its NPPs.
Folkers and Fairlie note that official organizations find it difficult to accept that increases in cancer near NPPs may be due to radioactive emissions. The pro-nuclear view is that routine radioactive releases to air and water from NPPs cause human exposures that are too small to explain increased nearby cancers and cancer deaths. Industry and the military assume first, that official risk models are correct, and second, that official dose estimates are not uncertain.
On the contrary, the UK government’s official “Report of the Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters” (CERRIE, 2005) found that “the models used to estimate radiation doses from nuclear plants are now known to be highly uncertain and unreliable.”
In view of evidence of harm presented in The Scientists Who Alerted, the White House’s current push to weaken or eliminate radiation protection standards in the United States amounts to criminal reckless endangerment, and must be stopped.
*German Kikk study: “Childhood Cancer in the Vicinity of Nuclear Power Plants,” P. Kaatsch, et al (2008), International Journal of Cancer, #122; and “Case-control study on childhood cancer in the vicinity of nuclear power plants in Germany 1980 – 2003”, C. Spix, et al (2008), European Journal of Cancer, #44.
