Dear Editor,
Re: “Waste debate focuses on radiation” Jan. 28.
It was disingenuous of presenter Jeremy Whitlock to imply that natural background radiation is of little concern. Indeed, the medical community regards it as a very serious concern.
According to the Canadian Cancer Society, natural background radiation in the form of radon-222, a gas emitted from the ground, is the leading cause of lung cancer in Canada after tobacco smoking. Lung cancer is the cause of approximately 3,200 deaths in this country annually.
According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, another natural background radionuclide called polonium-210, which is a decay product of radon-222, is now believed to be the main cancer-causing agent in tobacco.
It gets into the tobacco leaves from the soil, air, and via the phosphate fertilizer, which is used by tobacco growers. The carcinogenic mechanism is somewhat synergistic – when smoke is inhaled, polonium-210 binds onto the sticky tar particles, which attach themselves to the sensitive tissue of the bronchioles in the lungs.
The body cannot then expel the lodged polonium. As a highly energetic alpha-emitting particle it continues to irradiate the tissue in those localized areas over a sustained period, often ultimately causing a tumour to develop.
Whitlock’s assertion that small amounts of radioactivity can be beneficial flies in the face of the recommendations of international radiation protection bodies.
For example, the American Academy of Science’s Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR) report and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) both state that any, even small, additional amount of radioactivity humans are subjected to is unsafe.
