Harmful radiation from diagnostic imaging is a myth remaining in society due to fear and misinterpreted information
Orange County, CA - June 12th 2017 - The long-held belief that doses of radiation, like those customary from diagnostic imaging procedures, can cause cancer is a fallacy. Researchers found that adults and children had no increase in cancer risk from such processes. The myth responsible for this needless fear and misdiagnosis is due to the basis of a 70 year old hypothesis.
The linear no-threshold hypothesis (LNT) endorsed in 1946 by Nobel Laureate Hermann Muller states that the dose-responsibility relationship between radiation and the consumer is linear with no threshold dose. In layman’s terms all radiation is harmful, regardless of dosage or the rate of which it is received.
"The underlying intent of lowering future cancer risk, although desirable, goes astray, as the premise is based on the erroneous LNT and the resulting as-low-as-reasonably-achievable (ALARA) principle," said Jeffry A. Siegel, Ph.D., president and CEO of Nuclear Physics Enterprises in Marlton, New Jersey, in an article published in The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. "The assumption ignores evidence-supported adaptive responses that either repair mutations through enhanced repair enzymes or remove the unrepaired cells by apoptosis [death of cells as part of normal growth] or, most importantly, the immune system."As Siegel noted, children are thought to be more vulnerable and prone to chemical hazards. This line of thinking stems from inaccurate interpretations of data from the Hiroshima/Nagasaki life-span study. Despite this misconception, it was later proven that Japanese children below the age of 6 at the time of the bombings during World War II exposed to radiation up to 200 mSv showed no significant difference in adult-onset cancers when compared with a control group.
Universally, nuclear medicine and CT radiation doses are low, and Siegel notes that other studies show “initial radiation-induced damage is generally repaired or eliminated in a matter of hours by the body’s adaptive responses.” Most shockingly, those same studies show that low doses of radiation have actually been shown to stimulate the immune system to reduce cancer rates. Siegel says fear is the culprit responsible for the presence of this hypothesis remaining in society. “…The obsession over lowering radiation doses is a futile and laborious attempt to minimize what is, in fact, a nonexistent risk.” Radiophobia, an obsessive fear of ionizing radiation- in particular a fear of X-rays, is detrimental. He believes the dispersion of proper information on radiation is the only remedy for society’s instilled fear.