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08 November 2009

Answer to Question #922 Submitted to "Ask the Experts"

Category: Environmental and Background Radiation — General

The following question was answered by an expert in the appropriate field:

Are there any studies which correlate regional variations in background radiation (Denver compared with Seattle for example) with cancer rates?

Yes, there have been many such studies done. Radiation is one of the most studied areas of the natural world. If you search the archives of the Health Physics Journals you will come up with many articles on this subject. In just doing a quick search I found the following articles:

Cancer Death Rates and Background Radiation. Health Phys 78(6):692-693; 2000.
Cancer Death Rates and Background Radiation. Health Phys 76(6):692; 1999.
Natural Background Radiation and Cancer Death in Rocky Mountain States and Gulf Coast States. Health Physics 75(4):428-430; 1998.
Lung Cancer Rate vs. Mean Radon Level in U.S. Counties of Various Characteristics. Health Physics 72(1):114-119; 1997.

These are just a few of the articles on the subject and this is only from the Health Physics Journal; there are probably many others in other associated scientific journals.

Even though there are significant differences in background radiation doses across the United States and the world, mainly due to different cosmic and terrestrial components, there does not seem to be a direct correlation between background radiation and cancer rates. The background cancer rate in the United States is about 25-30 percent, depending on which cancers are included, and this number seems to be fairly constant from areas that have low background radiation to areas that are much higher. This is something that would not be expected if one were to follow the linear, no-threshold hypothesis; this is one of the pieces of evidence against this concept. But there is still controversy and continuing research in this area until we can better understand the long-term effects of low levels of radiation.

Kenneth Krieger, CHP

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