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trump’s new radiation exposure limits could be ‘catastrophic’ for women and girls

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By scooby

 This is an interesting story regarding a proposal to raise radiation exposure limits in particular, for the general public in the United States,


https://thebulletin.org/2025/11/trumps-new-radiation-exposure-limits-could-be-catastrophic-for-women-and-girls/

Comments

Anonymous said…
It does seem awfully high -- the average dose to chernobyl liquidators was reportedly 12 rem or so, so this new standard is saying that it would be OK for members of the United States general public to receive that same dose, by living 25 years near a nuclear facility:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_liquidators
11/24/2025 6:35 AM
Anonymous said…
Here is an article that questions the Linear No Threshold (LNT) radiation dosage theory:
https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25392
11/24/2025 7:45 AM
Anonymous said…
7:45 -- what about the evidence for radiation causing cataracts?

https://www.aao.org/education/headline/chernobyl-offers-insight-into-cataract-formation
11/24/2025 1:09 PM
Anonymous said…
What level of radiation caused the Cataracts? The aao.org article suggests that the airline workers had increased occurrence, has that been seen in Colorado? Or as the article from the edge points out, an area in Iran has a much higher background radiation but not increased cancer rates. The gist of Kistakowsky's complaint was that safety levels were arbitrarily set with out a strong scientific basis for setting them and we can run around with our hair on fire when values pulled from thin air (pun intended) are "violated".
11/24/2025 7:00 PM
Anonymous said…
The thing is that the cataract causation has a known mechanism, and it is also seen to occur. It might be in Colorado there are other confounding factors such as the UV light from high altitudes, and in areas with high background such as Ramsar or Kerala it simply is not well documented, or the populations in these areas have less sensitivity to radiation induced effects.

I agree it could be in the past the levels were arbitrarily set, but any new levels chosen should incorporate what is now known.

The cataract consideration is not the only case of this, as there could be other cases of non-stochastic harm, where cancer is not the only consideration.
11/25/2025 6:11 AM
Anonymous said…
I would also point out of course, that some of the studies regarding Chernobyl and the liquidators might contain bias, for example this group received increased medical surveillance, there might be reasons to claim harm in order to receive benefits or compensation, or it could be there is anti-nuclear sentiment there, or a desire to blame Russia for the accident especially in the context of the warfare going on since 2014, in other words to not portray the harms or possible lack thereof in a neutral manner. There also was various evidence that some of the harm was covered up by the Soviets following the accident. The Linear No Threshold fatality estimates for the accident are actually much higher than the figures sometimes publicized, also by the IAEA, in which only the immediate deaths by radiation poisoning, as well as population thyroid dose, is accounted for.
11/25/2025 6:52 AM
Anonymous said…
The chernobyl story is also not completely clear, there would have been beta particle exposure to the eyes as well. The airline workers especially pilots would have more UV exposure. The best evidence might come from radiologists who have occupational exposure, where it is a known hazard. In any case there could be a synergy with other insults to the eye, which suggests that there might be no real safe threshold.
11/25/2025 7:36 AM
Anonymous said…
Getting back to the overall theme radiation also impairs neurological development and can lower IQ.

Also some individuals are "radiosensitive" in that they lack the the normal genes which protect for cancer, provide hormesis, or lack healthy immune systems. This means certain subpopulations of the overall population may have individually greater risk that could be identifiable by genetic testing, meaning they could have stronger grounds to win a court case that their particular cancer is radiation induced.

Certain individual blood cancers are also more easily induced by radiation, even at low doses, than cancer in general so it also would be the case that any hormesis effects would not prevent a higher rate of those occuring.

Finally the levels in question may be simply too high for hormesis to occur or for radiation to provide a net population benefit, even if it is true in some way.
11/25/2025 9:05 AM
Anonymous said…
The studies of the effects of radiation damage seem to be based on the bombings of Japan and the disaster of Chernobyl. What studies have been done on areas surrounding 3 mile Island or for a wider survey, for the multiple areas in France that have a lot of nuclear reactors, that have not had accidents? The "normal" areas should be the ones that establish the baselines if we are to make a reasonable decision on creating all those nuclear centers to power all of the proposed AI centers.
11/27/2025 8:05 PM
Anonymous said…
8:05 -- One of the better data sets is that there were an exposed cohort of 10000 individuals in Taiwanese apartments containing rebar in their construction which had been contaminated by Co-60. The total dose to the population was 4000 person sievert. Some of the early papers on this were not correctly done, or fraudelent, and claimed a hormesis effect, but there were later papers showing dose did correlate to cancer incidence and that particular cancers such as blood cancers and breast cancers were easier to induce with radiation. There were also studies of cataracts and clouding of the eye, that showed the effects were real, and adverse in general.
11/28/2025 10:17 AM
Anonymous said…
This is another one claiming there was some excess mortality related to early nuclear accident in the United States, although it seems proper studies of this were never really done:

https://psmag.com/environment/50-years-after-nuclear-meltdown-3510/

There are some concerns that a much more modern and presumably safer reactor of a somewhat similar type (both use sodium with no containment structures, but the newer one is a fast reactor with HALEU) which is being constructed in Wyoming may also exhibit problematic failure modes, since approvals have been rushed through:

https://www.ucs.org/about/news/rushed-approval-experimental-nuclear-reactor-imperils-health-environment
12/04/2025 7:02 PM
Anonymous said…
I asked Google's chatbot about the Wyoming reactor. Perhaps it was hallucinating or simply unaware of issues relating to reactor safety, but it seemed to think the reactor had issues with its void coefficient and lack of moderator, that under certain conditions it would be hypothetically possible for the reactor to catastrophically disassemble its core. Furthermore of course, the use of HALEU and infrequent refueling intervals might hypothetically mean a greater inventory of fission products would be released in an accident scenario. It also pointed out that despite the remote location, there was an irreplaceable mine of some sort downwind of the reactor site which could hypothetically be contaminated, doing extreme damage to the US economy.
12/06/2025 6:04 AM
Anonymous said…
By the way I asked it some further questions. Evidently there was another sodium reactor which melted down near Detroit in the 1960's. It was picked up by anti-nuclear activists who wrote a book "We almost lost Detroit". But in fact the accident did show safety even under failure scenarios which adds to confidence in safety.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_1
12/11/2025 7:21 PM
Anonymous said…
But of course, and Wikipedia also has links to a failed program for a sodium reactor that was ultimately cancelled as being impractical, costly, and a proliferation risk:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinch_River_Breeder_Reactor_Project

This brings up how the narrative about safety obscures the other historical reasons these technologies have not been pursued.
12/12/2025 6:50 AM
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