Oh look, yet another person with an opinion on the LNT model for radiation exposure. As a safety professional, let me explain in really basic terms.
Everyone knows the model is pretty shit for long-term exposure to small doses. This isn’t news, and hasn’t been new for the past half century.
Similarly, we all know that chemical exposure levels are, for the most part, entirely bullshit. The exposure lengths are often based on 40 years of 40 hours a week, which is almost never true, and are even then very conservative.
The problem is that you can’t get accurate data. You can’t expose a couple of hundred people to hazardous conditions for decades, just to get better data. Everyone bitching about LNT for radiation or all sorts of chemical and biological exposure limits is overlooking one key detail.
We don’t have a better model. We can’t develop a better model in any remotely ethical way with current or near future technology either.
Like, to clarify, this is your argument, yeah? Wouldn’t “the highest levels we know don’t cause excess deaths” be a better standard? You could claim that that isn’t particularly rigorous, but neither is LNT. And it allows more movement than “We must spend every penny we can on radiation mitigation, regardless of harm reduction”
Its the best model we have it may not be 100% accurate but it is better than nothing and assumes any radiation exposure is carcinogenic. However in gen pop (read healthy adults) our natural repair mechanisms are generally apt to repair damage caused by exposure to doses less than 5mSv/y
Exactly! The model is wrong for low level, long term exposure. We know that, it’s not new or shocking. But there isn’t anything else, and you can make a decent argument there won’t be anything else either, so we’re kinda stuck with it.
I’m failing to see why you seem to be implying that low level exposure is dangerous then as we both seem to agree the current limits are abundantly over cautious as evidenced by high natural background exposure studies.
I know the whole “humans are not mice” thing … but wouldn’t tests on lab animals go a long way toward refining exposure models?
Yes, you can’t just assume that things will affect humans the same way they affect mice. And maybe a mouse model of long-term exposure is hampered by the short lifespans of mice. But surely that data, used in combination with the human data we already have, could help produce a more accurate, reasonable model?
In part, yes, that’s where many of our chemical and exposure limits come from.
But got it right in one. You can’t expose a mouse to decades of low level radiation, because mice rarely live to be 3. And you can’t just use 10 times the radiation because that’s exactly what you want to research.
What we have is pretty much how we know LNT is wrong, because we don’t really see more health risks in people who live in naturally more radioactive areas. But you can’t really construct a proper model from that kind of data. If you want to use a model for tens of millions of people over decades, even the tiniest change can make it go from “no harm at all” to “tens of thousands of corpses”.
Oh look, yet another person with an opinion on the LNT model for radiation exposure. As a safety professional, let me explain in really basic terms.
Everyone knows the model is pretty shit for long-term exposure to small doses. This isn’t news, and hasn’t been new for the past half century.
Similarly, we all know that chemical exposure levels are, for the most part, entirely bullshit. The exposure lengths are often based on 40 years of 40 hours a week, which is almost never true, and are even then very conservative.
The problem is that you can’t get accurate data. You can’t expose a couple of hundred people to hazardous conditions for decades, just to get better data. Everyone bitching about LNT for radiation or all sorts of chemical and biological exposure limits is overlooking one key detail.
We don’t have a better model. We can’t develop a better model in any remotely ethical way with current or near future technology either.
LNT is wrong
We know it’s wrong
We don’t know how to get to a different model
Let’s do nothing
Like, to clarify, this is your argument, yeah? Wouldn’t “the highest levels we know don’t cause excess deaths” be a better standard? You could claim that that isn’t particularly rigorous, but neither is LNT. And it allows more movement than “We must spend every penny we can on radiation mitigation, regardless of harm reduction”
Its the best model we have it may not be 100% accurate but it is better than nothing and assumes any radiation exposure is carcinogenic. However in gen pop (read healthy adults) our natural repair mechanisms are generally apt to repair damage caused by exposure to doses less than 5mSv/y
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1350448715000086
Exactly! The model is wrong for low level, long term exposure. We know that, it’s not new or shocking. But there isn’t anything else, and you can make a decent argument there won’t be anything else either, so we’re kinda stuck with it.
I’m failing to see why you seem to be implying that low level exposure is dangerous then as we both seem to agree the current limits are abundantly over cautious as evidenced by high natural background exposure studies.
I’m not?
I’m complaining about people who can only go “LNT bad, waaaah”. Put up something better to use.
I apologize for misinterpreting your comment
I know the whole “humans are not mice” thing … but wouldn’t tests on lab animals go a long way toward refining exposure models?
Yes, you can’t just assume that things will affect humans the same way they affect mice. And maybe a mouse model of long-term exposure is hampered by the short lifespans of mice. But surely that data, used in combination with the human data we already have, could help produce a more accurate, reasonable model?
In part, yes, that’s where many of our chemical and exposure limits come from.
But got it right in one. You can’t expose a mouse to decades of low level radiation, because mice rarely live to be 3. And you can’t just use 10 times the radiation because that’s exactly what you want to research.
What we have is pretty much how we know LNT is wrong, because we don’t really see more health risks in people who live in naturally more radioactive areas. But you can’t really construct a proper model from that kind of data. If you want to use a model for tens of millions of people over decades, even the tiniest change can make it go from “no harm at all” to “tens of thousands of corpses”.
https://www.cleanfutures.org/dogs-of-chernobyl/
cough cough