Cancer Postponement with Radon

Access to Energy has published articles about radiation hormesis for many years. Petr Beckmann even wore a vest filled with low-level radioactive material in order to illustrate this effect and to take advantage of its health benefits. Although there is a large and rapidly grow-research literature demonstrating radiation hormesis under many different conditions, the work by Bernard L. Cohen at the University of Pittsburgh on radon and lung cancer is probably the most spectacular. We first reported this in the Access to Energy article entitled "Vitamin R?'' in AtE 21, No. 4, p 4, December 1993. Cohen (who will be speaking at our annual DDP meeting to be held in San Diego on June 14-15) has continued to refine this work until it has become a giant, irremovable spike driven through the heart of the no-threshold linear hypothesis. Since this hypothesis is the foundation of virtually the entire antinuclear fear industry, Cohen's work is revolutionary. Without the no-threshold linear hypothesis, the enviro radiation bogey from fear of nuclear power plants to concerns about radioactive waste disposal becomes baseless propaganda. Moreover, since the antinuclear movement was the first of the great enviro success stories, the collapse of the credibility of this movement can seriously damage the effectiveness of current enviro propaganda in other areas as well.