Results support the hypothesis that radiation doses are related to increased cancer incidence around TMI. The analysis avoids medical detection bias, but suffers from inaccurate dose classification; therefore, results may underestimate the magnitude of the association between radiation and cancer incidence. These associations would not be expected, based on previous estimates of near-background levels of radiation exposure following the accident.
I'm just starting to get a feel for all this but what it looks like to me is that internal exposure to radionuclides is more dangerous than commonly thought.
About.com discusses thyroid cancer from Chernobyl. The World Health Organization estimates 50,000 cases of thyroid cancer from that accident. Does this apply to the current accident? Probably.
Oh. Yeah. Government and Industry will lie to you when it is in their interest. But you already knew that. Didn't you?
Let me repeat my prescription for the future: I wouldn't build any new nuke plants until we get some much safer designs. I wouldn't shut down current plants until we have replacements on line (lack of electricity kills too). And I hope to hell Polywell Fusion can be made to work. Will it produce radioactive substances from neutron bombardment? Yes. But you can choose what kind of radioactives are made by choosing the materials used in the plant. With fission you are stuck with what nature gives you.
The huge lag time involved between exposure and disease reminds me of asbestos. (The difference is that mesothelioma is asbestos-specific, so the trial lawyers don't have a proof problem.)
Some of their disturbing experiences were collected in the book Three Mile Island: The People's Testament, which is based on interviews with 250 area residents done between 1979 and 1988 by Katagiri Mitsuru and Aileen M. Smith.
It includes the story of Jean Trimmer, a farmer who lived in Lisburn, Pa. about 10 miles west of TMI. On the evening of March 30, 1979, Trimmer stepped outside on her front porch to fetch her cat when she was hit with a blast of heat and rain. Soon after, her skin became red and itchy as if badly sunburned, a condition known as erythema. About three weeks later, her hair turned white and began falling out. Not long after, she reported, her left kidney "just dried up and disappeared" -- an occurrence so strange that her case was presented to a symposium of doctors at the nearby Hershey Medical Center. All of those symptoms are consistent with high-dose radiation exposure.
There was also Bill Peters, an auto-body shop owner and a former justice of the peace who lived just a few miles west of the plant in Etters, Pa. The day after the disaster, he and his son -- who like most area residents were unaware of what was unfolding nearby -- were working in their garage with the doors open when they developed what they first thought was a bad sunburn. They also experienced burning in their throats and tasted what seemed to be metal in the air. That same metallic taste was reported by many local residents and is another symptom of radiation exposure, commonly reported in cancer patients receiving radiation therapy.
Peters soon developed diarrhea and nausea, blisters on his lips and inside his nose, and a burning feeling in his chest. Not long after, he had surgery for a damaged heart valve. When his family evacuated the area a few days later, they left their four-year-old German shepherd in their garage with 200 pounds of dog chow, 50 gallons of water and a mattress. When they returned a week later, they found the dog dead on the mattress, his eyes burnt completely white. His food was untouched, and he had vomited water all over the garage. They also found four of their five cats dead -- their eyes also burnt white -- and one alive but blinded. Peters later found scores of wild bird carcasses scattered over their property.
Links at the site.
I must admit I'm beginning to sound like a paranoid crank on the subject. But the more I learn the more I get the Firesign Theater feeling:
Statistics are the tools of liars. If you examine the 60 year history of radiation leaks from Hanford (at least one of them an experiment releasing 5000 curies of Iodine 131 over eastern Washington, Oregon, and Northern California) you will find a reckless disregard for people, cover-ups, and the information hidden for years only forced out by lawsuits. Here's a very good account from 1988:
And then GE (who else!) and the government, to cover their asses sought refuge in statistics that PROVED there was no connection to the thyroid cancer, and impotence, and hair loss, of neighbors to the facility, let alone those downwind, from the years of releases. Here's that whitewash from the Oxford Journal of Medicine:
What neither of these accounts reflect is the quiet payment to the victims by the government, with contractual agreement of the recipients to not say anything or give out the amount of payments. Until a few years ago you could walk into any Washington or Oregon county clerks office within the Columbia River plume area, and see bulletins posted on behalf of Hanford authorities, urging people with Thyroid Cancer to apply for relief. If asked, the clerks would hand out a several page account outlining the plume area, the years involved, and how to apply for the payoffs.
So Eric, I wouldn't believe anything coming from the government, the same government that overseas the drug war, and shoots pets and 92 year old women in cold blood, the same government that colludes with corporations like GE in cover-ups, and takes payoffs from same.
I'm skeptical about everything. Including radon and asbestos dangers. The government warns, the government says it's harmless, the lord giveth, the lord taketh away.
The NIH says one thing in 1979, another in 1997, and yet another in 2005. I guess it comes down to simply deciding what we want to believe about what.
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
The 1997 study may not have controlled for radon:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15657112
"the counties around TMI have the highest regional radon potential in the United States"
Radon kills 21,000 Americans per year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radon
Radon levels at TMI are so high that they cause the radiation monitors at TMI to sound false alarms:
http://articles.philly.com/2009-11-25/news/25282748_1_exelon-rendell-false-alarms
The huge lag time involved between exposure and disease reminds me of asbestos. (The difference is that mesothelioma is asbestos-specific, so the trial lawyers don't have a proof problem.)