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Top Expert Debunks Radiation Myths

George Washington's picture




 

Many have claimed that wildlife is thriving in the highly-radioactive Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

Some claim that a little radiation is harmless … or even good for you.

One of the main advisors to the Japanese government on Fukushima announced:

If you smile, the radiation will not affect you.   If you do not smile, the radiation will affect you.

 

This theory has been proven by  experiments on animals.

Are these claims true?

We Ask an Expert

To find out, Washington's Blog spoke with one of the world’s leading experts on the effects of radiation on living organisms: Dr. Timothy Mousseau.

Dr. Mousseau is former Program Director at the National Science Foundation (in Population Biology), Panelist for the National Academy of Sciences’ panels on Analysis of Cancer Risks in Populations Near Nuclear Facilities and GAO Panel on Health and Environmental Effects from Tritium Leaks at Nuclear Power Plants, and a biology professor – and former Dean of the Graduate School, and Chair of the Graduate Program in Ecology – at the University of South Carolina.

For the past 15 years, Mousseau and  another leading biologist – Anders Pape Møller – have studied the effects of radiation on birds and other organisms.

Mousseau has made numerous trips to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and Fukushima – making 896 inventories at Chernobyl and 1,100 biotic inventories in Fukushima as of July 2013 – to test the effect of radiation on plants and animals.

On the third anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, we spoke with Dr. Mousseau about what he discovered regarding the effects of radiation on plants, animals … and people.

[Question] How did you get into this field? Is it because you are an anti-nuclear activist?

[Mousseau]  No.

I’m an activist, but not an anti-nuclear scientist. I’m an activist for evidence-based science policy.

I got into this out of an interest in discovery of new forms of adaption to changing environments. I’m an evolutionary biologist by training. And – about a decade and a half ago – I met up with Anders Pape Møller, one of the world’s leading ornithologists.

We decided to go to Chernobyl and see if the females, the mothers, are doing anything to enhance their offspring’s fitness in response to this novel stressor of radioactive contaminants.

And then in 2005, when the international Atomic Energy Agency commissioned this report by a panel – the Chernobyl Forum – and the Chernobyl Forum put out their first release in 2005, followed by their main publication in 2006, we realized they didn’t cite anybody’s work that went against their dogma that contamination levels at Chernobyl were just too low to be of any profound significance for biological communities.

In fact, they have a statement in the Chernobyl Forum report where they suggest that the plants and animals are thriving because there are no people there.  And – by implication – the suggestion is that the radiation isn’t a problem.

[Q] What did you actually find in the field?

[Mousseau] What we observed was that in the more contaminated parts of the Chernobyl zone, there were many fewer critters, fewer birds singing, and we noticed there were no spider webs getting in our face.

We set up a quantitative design to measure the critters not only in the most contaminated areas, but also in the clean areas.  In the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone,  you have everything from pristine, completely uncontaminated areas to really highly-contaminated areas.  It’s kind of a quiltwork … a mosaic.

So this provides the ability to do rigorous comparative analyses of critters that are in the same environment, except for the radiation.

[Q] So you utilized good controls in terms of ruling out other health-damaging and mortality factors, because in this “quiltwork” ecology you had higher or lower levels of radiation … but otherwise the conditions were similar?

[Mousseau] Exactly, combined with the fact that – everywhere we went – we also measured all of the other environmental factors that would likely play some role in the abundance and distribution of organisms … such as the type of soil, whether it was forest or grass, the water, as well as the ambient conditions at the time we collected the data.

And we did a control for human habitation sites as well, in Belarus.

[Q] What kinds of effects did you test for?

[Mousseau] We’ve tested for mutation rates, estimates of genetic damage, estimates of sperm damage, sperm swimming [i.e. how mobile the sperm are], fertility rates in both females and males, longevity, age distribution of the birds in these different areas, species diversity, etc.

[Q] And what did you find?

[Mousseau] The diversity of birds is about half of what it should be in the most contaminated areas.  The total numbers of birds is only about a third of what it should be in the most contaminated areas.

In 2006, I decided to collect fruit flies across the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, and I couldn’t find very many.

And then I realized, there wasn’t any rotting fruit on the ground.  And considering that every farmer, every landowner would put up fruit trees in that part of the world, you look at the fruit trees and realize there’s hardly any fruit on them.

And of course, that’s why there weren’t many fruit flies.

And then it dawned on us, where are the pollinators? And that point, we realized there aren’t many bees and butterflies.

So we started counting the bees, the butterflies, the dragonflies, the spiders, and the grasshoppers.

And that’s when we realized that all of the groups we looked at showed significantly lower numbers in the most-contaminated areas.

It look us a little longer to figure out a way to study mammals. We decided we can count many of the mammals by looking at footprints in the snow. The ecologists in Canada and Northern Europe have been doing this for centuries. There’s even a book published [a field guide] for identifying animals by their footprints in the snow.

We found – for most of the mammals – significant declines in numbers in the most contaminated areas. The one exception were the wolves, which showed no difference, probably because they have huge ranges which span across the high and low areas of contamination.

[We'll cut away from the interview to explain what Mousseau found, using information and slides from his published studies. The copyright to all images are owned by Dr. Mousseau.]

Indeed, Mousseau found – in studies of plants, insects and mammals – that:

  • Most organisms studied show significantly increased rates of genetic damage in direct proportion to the level of exposure to radioactive contaminants
  • Many organisms show increased rates of deformities and developmental abnormalities in direct proportion to contamination levels
  • Many organisms show reduced fertility rates
  • Many organisms show reduced life spans
  • Many organisms show reduced population sizes
  • Biodiversity is significantly decreased many species locally extinct
  • Mutations are passed from one generation to the next, and show signs of accumulating over time
  • Mutations are migrating out of affected areas into populations that are not exposed (i.e. population bystander effects)

(Click any image for bigger, better version.) He found that the numbers of birds plummeted:

And biodiversity significantly declined:

The same is true for bees:

Butterflies:

And mammals:

Examples of abnormalities Mousseau found include cataracts, albinism, and tumors:

And he found that the brains of birds in high-radiation areas are smaller.

[Back to the interview.]

[Q] Aren’t humans totally different from the plants and animals you’ve studied?

[Mousseau] Most medical research is conducted with either animal models or cell lines. What’s the reason? Because we can look at the effects very clearly in these animal populations.

And we’re just animals … so what happens to animals is likely to be of relevance to humans as well.

[However, since humans live longer than most animals - and much longer than birds or bacteria - it can take longer to see genetic mutations due to radiation.]

[Q] What about people who say that low doses of radiation are actually good for you, what’s called “radiation hormesis?”  And I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but some Department of Energy articles have tried to push that theory.

[Mousseau] Most of those reports have been generated as a result of energy-related funding.  And the data which supports the theory is really shaky … and even flaky.

We conducted meta-analysis a couple of years ago published in the Cambridge Biological Review. We analyzed all of the published we could find that was conducted with any kind of scientific rigor for naturally radioactive areas around the world.

And the idea is that there has been plenty of time in these natural hotspots for organisms to adapt and evolve and show adaptive responses and even hormetic responses.

And there was no indication in this meta-analysis that hormesis was playing any role in any of these populations, and certainly not the human populations.

[Q]  Did your meta-review include human studies?

[Mousseau] Yes, it included everything we could find.

[Q]  Did your research back up the linear no threshold model of radiation [the prevailing scientific view of radiation, which is that there is no safe dose]?

[Mousseau]. Damage increases down to very low levels of radiation.  There’s no indication that the effect disappears at low doses.

Science Daily summarized Mousseau’s findings in 2012:

Even the very lowest levels of radiation are harmful to life, scientists have concluded in the Cambridge Philosophical Society’s journal Biological Reviews. Reporting the results of a wide-ranging analysis of 46 peer-reviewed studies published over the past 40 years, researchers from the University of South Carolina and the University of Paris-Sud found that variation in low-level, natural background radiation was found to have small, but highly statistically significant, negative effects on DNA as well as several measures of health.

 

The review is a meta-analysis of studies of locations around the globe …. “Pooling across multiple studies, in multiple areas, and in a rigorous statistical manner provides a tool to really get at these questions about low-level radiation.”

 

Mousseau and co-author Anders Møller of the University of Paris-Sud combed the scientific literature, examining more than 5,000 papers involving natural background radiation that were narrowed to 46 for quantitative comparison. The selected studies all examined both a control group and a more highly irradiated population and quantified the size of the radiation levels for each. Each paper also reported test statistics that allowed direct comparison between the studies.

 

The organisms studied included plants and animals, but had a large preponderance of human subjects. Each study examined one or more possible effects of radiation, such as DNA damage measured in the lab, prevalence of a disease such as Down’s Syndrome, or the sex ratio produced in offspring. For each effect, a statistical algorithm was used to generate a single value, the effect size, which could be compared across all the studies.

 

The scientists reported significant negative effects in a range of categories, including immunology, physiology, mutation and disease occurrence. The frequency of negative effects was beyond that of random chance.

 

***

 

“When you do the meta-analysis, you do see significant negative effects.”

 

“It also provides evidence that there is no threshold below which there are no effects of radiation,” he added. “A theory that has been batted around a lot over the last couple of decades is the idea that is there a threshold of exposure below which there are no negative consequences. These data provide fairly strong evidence that there is no threshold — radiation effects are measurable as far down as you can go, given the statistical power you have at hand.”

 

Mousseau hopes their results, which are consistent with the “linear-no-threshold” model for radiation effects, will better inform the debate about exposure risks. “With the levels of contamination that we have seen as a result of nuclear power plants, especially in the past, and even as a result of Chernobyl and Fukushima and related accidents, there’s an attempt in the industry to downplay the doses that the populations are getting, because maybe it’s only one or two times beyond what is thought to be the natural background level,” he said. “But they’re assuming the natural background levels are fine.”

 

“And the truth is, if we see effects at these low levels, then we have to be thinking differently about how we develop regulations for exposures, and especially intentional exposures to populations, like the emissions from nuclear power plants, medical procedures, and even some x-ray machines at airports.”

Postscript: To support Dr. Mousseau’s important research, please consider making a donation to the University of South Carolina’s Chernobyl and Fukushima Research Initiative (specify that the donation is to support Mousseau’s research.)

 

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Wed, 03/12/2014 - 22:13 | 4541421 caustixoid
caustixoid's picture

WB - the picture is awesome!  Sadly everyone at TEPCO and the Japanese government still has all their digits. Maybe they ought to let the Yakuza formally take over, rather than just run the subcontractors...

TEPCO's just another TBTF:  The more they fuck up, the more money they get.  No one of import has suffered any consequences. 

 

 

Wed, 03/12/2014 - 21:33 | 4541293 cynicalskeptic
cynicalskeptic's picture

Isn't that just a screw-up Yakuza?  Missing ends of fingers are pretty common - your boss literally 'cuts you down' when you make a mistake.

Wed, 03/12/2014 - 20:15 | 4541042 ExAureus
ExAureus's picture

Fuck man, that makes me sick to the stomach.

Wed, 03/12/2014 - 20:20 | 4541068 whatthecurtains
whatthecurtains's picture

He should try telling this to survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  

Thu, 03/13/2014 - 03:10 | 4542024 snr-moment
snr-moment's picture

Or Dresden.

Wed, 03/12/2014 - 20:59 | 4541198 Reptil
Reptil's picture

Newly published research on Hiroshima A-bomb low dose radiation damage
http://www.rrjournal.org/doi/pdf/10.1667/RR2629.1

victims' health problems ignored in post-war Japan: coverup
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSw4PQpPKKY

Wed, 03/12/2014 - 21:36 | 4541304 cynicalskeptic
cynicalskeptic's picture

Not to mention all the US Army 'volunteers' sitting in ditches during A bomb tests - to show how 'safe' it was to be that close to an atomic explosion.......   Military brass still has a hard on for tactical nukes.   Hell.... exposure to depleted uranium artillery shells is bad enough.

Wed, 03/12/2014 - 22:43 | 4541528 caustixoid
caustixoid's picture

"Your government DOES care about you soldier.  Trust me, it's safe.  Now get out there and show Ivan some yankee courage"

Nevada test subjects to Floyd's "Great Gig in the Sky"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz9g_rl2JnU

Thu, 03/13/2014 - 02:10 | 4541971 BeetleBailey
BeetleBailey's picture

GW: "Pandora's Promise"...a nuke documentary with former NO-nuke activists now "changing their minds"...read the credits...didn't appear to be sponsored by any contra-energy (Big Oil - film was funded by people it looks like)...

 

Care to shed some opinion on it?

Thu, 03/13/2014 - 07:14 | 4542175 Walt D.
Walt D.'s picture

I saw this a while back. There is an interesting book by Petr Beckmann -"The Health Hazards of not going Nuclear", published in the late 70's or early 80's, that compares the problems of our various sources of power looking at the entire life cycle. (What I mean by this is that you can not say the Chevy Volt is a zero emission car if you look at all the polution produced during the construction, and all the pollution produced by the coal power plants that produce the energy to charge its batteries).

Wed, 03/12/2014 - 21:34 | 4541296 MeMadMax
MeMadMax's picture

What the fuck ever dude...

 

We, humans, have detonated 2,044 nukes in the entire world...

 

But yet, we are still fine...

 

You all are a bunch of pussies, scared of the nuclear boogeyman...

Wed, 03/12/2014 - 22:49 | 4541553 johnQpublic
johnQpublic's picture

are we fine?

are we really?

increasing rates of autism, cancer, and you frikkin name it

even with better available medecine, rates of basically incurable diseases do nothing but increase

ask your self why

and before those nukes were detonated,there was no backround level of radiation

Thu, 03/13/2014 - 00:25 | 4541835 Kassandra
Kassandra's picture

Yeah. Just checked with the MSM..CNN no less. Article states that in 16 years, cancer will be THE leading cause of death. They know.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/11/health/cancer-care-asco-report/

Thu, 03/13/2014 - 02:22 | 4541981 snr-moment
snr-moment's picture

Well, that MIGHT have to do with an aging population.  Age is the most highly correlated risk factor for cancer, don't ya know.

Thu, 03/13/2014 - 04:09 | 4542053 Tall Tom
Tall Tom's picture

So let's exacerbate this by releasing Radionucleotides.

 

Have you ever heard of Bio-Accumulation? Perhaps death will be caused by something else other than Cancer if the Radionucleotides had not been released in the first place. Is there a correlation of age and Bio-Accumulation?

 

What Hospitals are releasing Radioactive wastes? Source that please.

 

Any NRC guys on the board? Any other Cops on the site?  This demands an investigation and a supeona. It is a matter of Public safety and I know that some of you are involved with Oathkeepers.

 

Thu, 03/13/2014 - 04:30 | 4542080 snr-moment
snr-moment's picture

Hosppitals are NOT responsible for what happens to diagnostic radionuclides once injected or administered to a patient.  And inhalational agents are vented OUTSIDE after the test.  Standard procedure.  I'll look for source material for you.

Thu, 03/13/2014 - 04:40 | 4542086 snr-moment
snr-moment's picture

by the way, you ARE aware that radioactivity and half life are inversely related right.  That's why I would still sleep with the gorgeous woman emitting C14

Thu, 03/13/2014 - 04:55 | 4542095 Bearwagon
Bearwagon's picture

Half-life and specific activity are correlated, but that says nothing about the energy level of the emitted parts, and therefore nothing about the hazard they cause. Being hit by twenty bike riders is not the same as being hit once by a bus with those twenty aboard, isn't it?! Or what do you think how comes that Plutonium is much more dangerous than Strontium, although it has a half-live of roughly 24 000 years, while that of Sr is only about 29 years? Get sober, man!

Thu, 03/13/2014 - 05:24 | 4542119 snr-moment
snr-moment's picture

Because the majority of plutonium poisoning is from it's alha emmiter characteristics  and is a potent cause of lung cancer.  It is also a cemically toxic metal.  Stontium is injected for bone mets.  What's your point?  Cosmic rays are extremely high energy.  Should we all live in caves?

Thu, 03/13/2014 - 05:33 | 4542125 Bearwagon
Bearwagon's picture

Of course living in caves would do no good, due to Radon. My point is that it would be plain wrong to think that a long half-life makes a radiation emitter less dangerous. Things are a little more complicated (you seem to know). What we should do is avoiding every preventable exposion to radioactivity, no matter the source. We have to deal with enough unavoidable exposure already, so it would be outright folly to accept any additional radiation from wherever it may derive. I don't want to be a fearmonger - but I am of the opinion that these things have to be taken extremely serious.

Thu, 03/13/2014 - 06:12 | 4542140 snr-moment
snr-moment's picture

So can I take it you never fly?

Thu, 03/13/2014 - 06:22 | 4542145 Bearwagon
Bearwagon's picture

Almost. I once flew a lot - but only with full size gliders.  ;-) (Honestly! I never flew with a jet, and do not plan on doing so.) I get your point, though, and I think that the exposure during flight is the price one has to pay for that sort of fast transportation. It is not such a great dose you get, and you do not get contaminated - so I think of it as a sort of bearable risk, but a risk nonetheless.

Thu, 03/13/2014 - 06:32 | 4542147 snr-moment
snr-moment's picture

OK. so we agree. I think you have to weight the risks involved.  I've seen 18 year olds die of asthma attacks induced by air pollution in cities.  Chicago, surrounded by a ring of nuclear plants gets electricity at .11 per kWh (poverty is associated withy increased mortality from all causes) and has some of the cleanest air of any big city in the USA.  It's always a trade-off.

Wed, 03/12/2014 - 22:38 | 4541453 caustixoid
caustixoid's picture

We, humans, have detonated 2,044 nukes in the entire world...  But yet, we are still fine...

Thanks for reading the article before your thoughtful comments based on its contents.   Oh, and hats off on your impersonation of the Black Knight in blog form: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikssfUhAlgg

 

Wed, 03/12/2014 - 21:38 | 4541307 cynicalskeptic
cynicalskeptic's picture

You volunteering to be 'up close and personal' to monitor one?

Want to go live near Chernobyl?

Thu, 03/13/2014 - 02:28 | 4541990 snr-moment
snr-moment's picture

Live near a hospital?  Guess where their radionuclides go.

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