Strange Glow
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15. Wilson’s pulses are one of the first examples of scientists recognizing the dual nature of electromagnetic waves, in which they behave like both particles and waves. At this time, Einstein had been formalizing the particle characteristics of electromagnetic waves into a comprehensive quantum theory, where electromagnetic energy is described as traveling through space in particle-like packets, each containing small discrete units of energy (i.e., quanta).
16. Jenkin J. William and Lawrence Bragg, 330.
17. Jenkin J. William and Lawrence Bragg, 334.
18. Bragg W. H. Concerning the Nature of Things, 116–159.
19. To lessen our confusion, we will continue to refer to William Lawrence Bragg as “Willie,” just as his friends and family did for the rest of his life.
20. The realization that DNA is the target of radiation did not come about as a single experimental discovery; rather, it developed due to the gradual accumulation of overwhelming supporting evidence contributed by many different scientists. That evidence is too extensive to be reviewed here. Interested readers may consult a radiation biology textbook, such as Radiobiology for the Radiologist by Hall and Giaccia, for accounts of that work.
21. A cellular phenomenon known as bystander effect has been demonstrated to occur in laboratory cell culture under some conditions. This is a phenomenon in which an unirradiated cell can be affected by radiation damage occurring to a neighboring cell. The mechanism of this phenomenon is not understood, but likely involves a DNA damage signal in one cell being transmitted to its neighbors.
22. Jenkin J. William and Lawrence Bragg, 320.
23. Hall K. T. The Man in the Monkeynut Coat.
24. Van der Kloot W. “Lawrence Bragg’s role in developing sound-ranging in World War I.”
25. Jenkin J. William and Lawrence Bragg, 377.
26. Jenkin J. William and Lawrence Bragg, 374.
27. Jenkin J. William and Lawrence Bragg, 374–375.
28. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=34760878
29. Jenkin J. William and Lawrence Bragg, 340.
30. Jenkin J. William and Lawrence Bragg, 379.
31. Reeves R. A Force of Nature, 92.
32. Jenkin J. William and Lawrence Bragg, 402.
33. Crowther J. G. The Cavendish Laboratory: 1874–1974.
34. Rutherford mentored 11 scientists who later won the Nobel Prize.
35. Reeves R. A Force of Nature, 65.
36. German scientist Fritz Haber won the Nobel Prize for artificially synthesizing ammonia from nitrogen gas. Such fixation of nitrogen from atmospheric gas was previously only possible through the metabolic processes of anaerobic bacteria. Ammonia is an important ingredient in the production of fertilizers, so the discovery had a huge economic impact for world agriculture. Recruited by the German army to produce chemical weapons during World War I, Haber suffered postwar persecution from the Nazis because he was a Jew, and emigrated first to England (where Rutherford refused to shake his hand), and then to Palestine, where he died shortly before World War II broke out.
37. Kendrew J. C. The Thread of Life, 44.
38. Watson J. D. The Double Helix, ix, (emphasis added).
39. Watson J. D. The Double Helix, 33.
40. Watson J. D., and F.H.C. Crick. “A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid.”
41. Jenkin J. William and Lawrence Bragg, 435–436.
42. Hall K. T. The Man in the Monkeynut Coat, 11.
43. Sayre A. Rosalind Franklin & DNA.
44. Jenkin J. William and Lawrence Bragg, 436.
45. Watson J. D. The Double Helix, 34 and 69.
46. Watson J. D. The Double Helix, viii.
47. Watson J. D. The Double Helix, 140.
48. A more comprehensive and academically rigorous history of the discovery of the double helix, and all the scientific discoveries leading up to it, can be found in The Path to the Double Helix, by historian of science Robert Olby.
49. DeMartini D. G., et al. “Tunable iridescence in a dynamic biophotonic system.”
CHAPTER 12: SILENT SPRING
1. Iqbal A. “Invisible Killer Invades Home.”
2. Iqbal A. “Invisible Killer Invades Home.”
3. It had been known since the 1970s that the air in houses built on radioactive tailings—the waste generated from the milling of uranium and radium—could contain high concentrations of radon, but it was not known that radon from natural ground sources could reach the levels found in the Watras home. In 1983, the US Environmental Protection Agency set an action level for radon in homes of 4 pCi/L (150 Bq/m3), as it was mandated to do by the Federal Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act of 1978. An action level is the level above which some type of remediation is thought warranted.
4. Iqbal A. “Invisible Killer Invades Home.”
5. Iqbal A. “Invisible Killer Invades Home.”
6. NAS/NRC. Health Risks of Radon.
7. Lubin J., et al. “Design issues in epidemiological studies.”
8. Haber’s Rule has a notorious origin. The rule was developed by the same Fritz Haber who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering a synthetic procedure to fix atmospheric nitrogen, and then went on to work on perfecting gas warfare weapons for the Germans during World War I. He formulated his famous rule in order to estimate the concentrations of mustard and chlorine gas needed to kill enemy troops under various battlefield exposure time scenarios. After he died, the Nazis used Haber’s rule to determine doses of the gas Zyklon B needed to kill Jews in concentration camps. Sadly, some of Haber’s relatives were among the Jews exterminated. The rule has since been found applicable to a variety of health effects from a number of different airborne agents, and is an important analytical tool routinely used by respiratory toxicologists for exposure assessments.
9. The WLM unit is technically defined as the amount of radon exposure that a miner would receive during a month of mining work (170 working hours) at a specific air radioactivity concentration called a Working Level (~200 pCi/L air).
10. Mossman K. L. Radiation Risks in Perspective, 53–64.
11. One of the rare times when LNT was put aside for determining low-dose carcinogen risk was the case of bladder cancer produced by the artificial sweetener saccharin. After being banned from the market for many years because high-dose studies in rats found that it could produce bladder cancer, subsequent studies of saccharin revealed that the cancer was the direct result of saccharin particles precipitating from the urine in the bladder. No cancer occurred without precipitates. Since saccharin precipitates cannot form at normal dietary concentrations no matter how much diet soda you drink, the high-dose situation in rats was deemed irrelevant to the very low doses humans are exposed to in artificially sweetened food and drinks. Therefore, the LNT model was dropped and saccharin was returned to the market (Rodricks J. V. Calculated Risks, 189–190).
12. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA Assessment of Risks from Radon in Homes.
13. Statisticians sometimes refer to this type of risk representation as an effort-to-yield measure.
14. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA Assessment of Risks from Radon in Homes.
15. The precise epidemiological definition of the number needed to harm is that it is the inverse (reciprocal) of the attributable risk, which, in turn, is defined as the difference in rate of an adverse health effect between an exposed population and an unexposed population.
16. Gigerenzer G. Risk Savvy.
17. Odds ratios and relative risks are measures of association that epidemiologists commonly use to quantify risk levels determined through case-control studies and cohort studies, respectively.
18. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA Assessment of Risks from Radon in Homes.
19. American Cancer Society. Cancer Facts and Figures 2014.
20. This is the 2012 estimate for Americans over 18 years old, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
21. Seasonal infl
uenza deaths vary widely but average about 20,000 per year in the United States.
22. Slovik P. The Perception of Risk.
23. Kabat G. C. Hyping Health Risks, 111–145.
24. Kabat G. C. Hyping Health Risks, 143; the original source is Stat Bite. “Causes of lung cancer in nonsmokers.”
25. Kabat G. C. Hyping Health Risks, 116.
26. Kabat G. C. Hyping Health Risks, 116.
27. Kabat G. C. Hyping Health Risks, 115.
28. Kabat G. C. Hyping Health Risks, 120–123.
29. Abelson P. H. “Radon today.”
30. Abelson P. H. “Radon today.”
31. The EPA continues to use the older unit of pCi/L, while most of the rest of the world uses the contemporary international standard unit of Bq/m3. The use of the older unit for setting radon standards is unfortunate because it results in large rounded numbers, like 100 Bq/m3, being converted into small, seemingly precise values, like 2.7 pCi/L. Using these smaller and apparently precise numbers suggests to the public that even trace quantities are dangerous and that the hazard level is known with a high degree of precision; however, neither is the case. For this reason, it is the author’s opinion that the United States should abandon the old unit (pCi/L) and adopt the international unit (Bq/m3) for purposes of home radon control.
32. World Health Organization. WHO Handbook on Indoor Radon.
33. Abelson P. H. “Radon today.”
34. The Watras house had 16 working levels (WL) in the living room. Assuming 17 hours per day of occupancy and a 30-day month, this amounted to 575 WLM for the one year that the Watrases inhabited the home. This 575 WLM multiplied by EPA’s lung cancer risk rate for smokers of 0.097% per WLM gives a risk level of 55.8%. The 16 WL radon concentration comes from measurements made by the Philadelphia Electric Company (Iqbal A. “Invisible Killer Invades Home”).
35. Kabat G. C. Hyping Health Risks, 121.
CHAPTER 13: A TALE OF TWO CITIES
1. For our purposes we will use the convention that radiography refers to a radiological medical procedure, and radiology refers the radiological medical profession, which includes both diagnostic and therapeutic radiologists. (To make things even more confusing, therapeutic radiologists are often called radiation oncologists because they treat cancer—onco means tumor in Greek.)
2. ICRP. 1990 Recommendations.
3. Gigerenzer G. Risk Savvy, 164.
4. Gigerenzer G. Calculated Risk, 111–114.
5. Radiation dose is dependent upon breast size; large-breasted women receive a higher dose than small-breasted women.
6. Differences in radiation sensitivity between tissues is another factor contributing to effective dose calculations, in addition to the tissue’s fraction of total body weight (NCRP Report. Limitations of Exposure, 21–23; NAS/NRC. Health Risks from Exposure).
7. “Number needed to treat” gets its name from its origins in assessing the value of medical treatments. But the metric works for evaluating a variety of benefits, not just the benefits from medical treatments. For this reason, the author wishes that the metric had the more universal name of number needed to benefit (NNB) to clearly juxtapose it to its counter metric, the number needed to harm (NNH). Nevertheless, we will stick with the conventional terminology so as not to confuse things even more by adding yet another term. Readers should just keep in mind that NNH is always the harm metric, and NNT is the benefit metric. See http://www.thennt.com.
8. Beil L. “To screen or not to screen”; Harris R. P. “How best to determine the mortality benefit.”
9. Kopans D. B., and A. J. Vickers. “Mammography screening and the evidence.”
10. The 613 per 1,000 false-positive rate is specifically for women who begin annual screening at age 50, as in this example. Women who begin screening at age 60 have a lower false-positive rate.
11. Quoted in Beil L. “To screen or not to screen.”
12. Welch H. G., et al. Overdiagnosed, chapter 5. (Source of original data is Sone S., et al. “Results of three-year mass screening programme.”)
13. Some have estimated mean effective doses of 12 mSv, with 20 mSv being the upper end of the range of doses (Brenner D. J., and C. D. Elliston. “Estimating radiation risks”).
14. AAPM Task Group 217. Radiation Dose from Airport Scanners.
15. Twombly R. “Full-body CT screening”; Douple E. B., et al. “Long-term radiation-related effects.”
16. Gigerenzer G. Calculated Risks, 68–70.
17. Beil L. “To screen or not to screen.”
18. NCRP Report. Second Primary Cancers.
CHAPTER 14: SORRY, WRONG NUMBER
1. Comments made by residents at the Scarborough Town Council meeting were obtained from a story by Michael Kelly in the Scarborough Leader, “Cell Tower Proposal Back to Square One.”
2. Baan R., et al. “Carcinogenicity of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields.”
3. Schüz J., et al. “Cellular telephone use and cancer risk.”
4. INTERPHONE Study Group. “Brain tumor risk.”
5. A decile is one of ten equal groups of individuals. Dividing individuals into deciles according to rank order is a method of splitting ranked data into subsections, such that individuals in each decile are similar for the variable being assessed. The top decile here means the group with the highest radio wave dose to their brains.
6. Lifetime risk rate is 0.6% for brain cancer or other nervous system cancer, according to SEER 2009–2011 data for the United States: http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/brain.html.
7. Source: Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, April 17–May 19, 2013 Tracking Survey.
8. Deltour I., et al. “Time trends in brain tumor incidence rates”; Deorah S., et al. “Trends in brain cancer incidence”; Little M. P., et al. “Mobile phone use and glioma risk.”
9. Hill A. B. “The environment and disease.”
10. Kabat G. C. Hyping Health Risks, 144.
11. In particular, anti-cellphone activists often cite a specific report, by H. Lai and N. P. Singh (“Acute low-energy microwave exposure increased DNA single-strand breaks in rat brain cells”), that claims radio waves with wavelengths similar to those used by cell phones produce DNA damage in the cells of rat brains. Yet, these same activists often fail to mention that a highly-competent team of well-respected radiation biologists at Washington University in St. Louis, subsequently could not reproduce the Lai and Singh findings under controlled experimental conditions. (Malyapa R. S., et al. “DNA damage in rat brain cells.”) Additionally, the Washington University scientists found that the comet assay used by Lai and Singh to measure DNA damage in the isolated brain cells was greatly affected by the specific method by which the rats were euthanized, presumably due to differences in DNA degradation that occurs while the brains are being harvested from the animals. This suggests that the comet assay may be particularly prone to DNA degradation artifacts introduced during the cumbersome process of recovering the cells from the rat brains, thus raising further doubt about the validity of the findings in the Lai and Singh report.
12. Fagin D. Toms River, 150–151.
13. A small group of scientists advocates the concept that low doses of radiation are beneficial to health. The theory that high-dose toxins can actually be beneficial at low doses (as opposed to being merely benign) is called hormesis. The concept has failed to gain traction among mainstream scientists, particularly since its tenets share some resemblance to the now discredited field of homeopathy in medicine. Hormesis has been rejected by the National Academy of Sciences BEIR Committees, because adoption of its unproven principles by the radiation protection community could increase exposure limits to potentially dangerous levels.
14. Since the IARC ruling, two more case-control studies, from France and Sweden, have reported an association between cell phone use and brain cancer (Coureau G., et al. “Mobile phone use and brain tumours in the CERENAT case-control study”; Hardell L., and M. Carlberg. “Mobile
phone and cordless phone use and the risk for glioma—analysis of pooled case-control studies in Sweden, 1997–2003 and 2007–2009”). But both studies used patient interviews and questionnaires to assess cell phone exposures. As we’ve already seen, this approach to estimating brain doses is highly prone to recall bias (see chapter 9 and Kleinerman R. A, et al. “Self-reported electrical appliance use and risk of adult brain tumors”), and thus is likely to produce a false association. Also, in the French study, controls had a statistically significantly higher educational level than did the cases (p < 0.001), suggesting that cases represent a lower socioeconomic status than controls; this could, in turn, indicate other significantly different exposures between the two groups beyond just their cell phone usage. For these reasons, the INTERPHONE study, which the IARC largely based its 2011 decision on, remains the most reliable cell phone study to date, and these two weaker studies neither support nor refute the IARC’s earlier ruling on the carcinogenic potential of cell phones.
15. Gaynor M. “The quietest place on earth.”
16. Crockett C. “Searching for distant signals.”
17. Röösli M. “Radiofrequency electromagnetic field exposure.” See table 1 of this article for a listing of the double-blind studies.
18. In addition to x-rays and gamma rays (ionizing radiations), Hermann Muller also tested radio waves (nonionizing radiation). The military had asked him to conduct these tests because of rumors that radar workers were prone to sterility. These rumors were so rampant that, in England, some male soldiers specifically requested that they be assigned radar duties the week before a weekend leave. Muller found that radio waves produced neither sterility nor inheritable mutations in fruit flies, and condoms remained the most effective birth control option for soldiers (Carlson E. A. Genes, Radiation, and Society, 283).
CHAPTER 15: HOT TUNA
1. Brown E. “Radioactive Tuna from Fukushima? Scientists Eat it Up.”
2. With the exception of C-14, all the naturally abundant isotopes of carbon and nitrogen are stable.
3. Narula S. K. “Sushiomics.”
4. Madigan D. J., et al. “Pacific bluefin tuna transport Fukushima-derived radionuclides.”