Monday, December 21, 2009

Potential indolent tumors from lifetime repeated low dose radiation exposures

The need to immediately update Radiation Risk Calculations for women and children and specific organs, like the brain. Please ask the EPA to stop procrastinating.

Did you know that the risk of non cancerous complications and benign radiation induced tumors from multiple low dose radiation exposures is 50% higher for women than for men? The most commonly used standard EPA REFERENCE MAN is obsolete. After twenty to thirty year latency periods today the risks are even higher for children, not only because their growing bodies are more vulnerable, but because they hope to live 60-80 years, twice as long as any 30 year old male adult that the now obsolete 1990 REFERENCE MAN was based on starting in the early 1970s after Nixon declared WAR ON CANCER.

I am wondering if the 50% higher impact on women may explain why more than twice as many women have meningioma brain tumors than men and why the most common benign braintumor meningioma is twice as common as the more aggressive glioma brain tumors. Almost a third of middle aged women have benign fibroids which look the same as meningioma cells under a microscope. I was just reading about the thousands of radiation induced abdominal tumors from many multiple Ct scans reported in 2007. Each CT scan is equal to several hundred plain x-rays today. And this is scary and folks used to ignore me when I said the many multiple full mouth dental xrays I had fifty years ago from three different types of dentists contributed to my meningioma brain tumor, plus a decade of cordless analog home phone use before my brain tumor was discovered on the same side of my head that I hold the phone. And I wondered WHY the number of new meningioma brain tumor cases in 2004-2005 was so many more than were anticipated by the Central Brain Tumor Registry of the United States(www.CBTRUS.org) Now CBTRUS onine reports that meningiomas are 37% of all primary brain tumors, more than twice as many as the 17% more aggressive glioma brain tumors like Sen Ted Kennedy died from recently. Yet there is still no effective chemotherapy agent FDA approved specifically for classic benign, atypical, recurrent or malignant meningiomas.

Did you hear about the reduction in recommended mammograms from the Prevention Task Force? Have you seen the new FDA warning about limiting Ct scans and potential accidental overdoses? Or the recent news story of possible radiation induced benign tumor or cancer from multiple Ct scans in your lifetime? Reducing medical costs for our health care is not the major reason to reduce our total cummulative life time low dose man made diagnostic and therapeutic radiation exposures.

No one wants to scare any of us, but inquiring minds might want to know more about mammograms, if so please go to http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0952-4746/29/2A/S08/
and there are many more research articles in the side bar

It is scary to me that proven results of the 2005 BEIR VII National Academies of Science reports have not been fully implemented by all government agencies to protect the public, especially women and children. In 2008, then Senators Obama and Henry Waxman thought it was important to publically list the additional risk levels for women and children separately as REFERENCE WOMAN and REFERENCE CHILD not just the old obsolete 1990's REFERENCE MAN and wrote to the EPA a short 2 page letter requesting published RAD RISK info for women and children. They were told it was still in the works by former EPA Adninstrator Stephan Johnson who wrote that REFERENCE MAN was totally obsolete in his reply to them.
http://www.ieer.org/sdafiles/16-1.pdf

And in October 2009, still nothing has been done by the new EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to make the public more aware of the additional vulnerability of women and children and our grandchildren and the higher overall risk for young women, especially pregnant women with their early first trimester fetus at greater risk.
This longer 5 page letter from Honorable Rep Ed Markey MA is the most recent communication I can find, he was requesting a response from EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson by Nov, 17, 2009, I do not know if he got one yet,but her EPA office staff could not provide me with a copy of her reply to him and suggested I contact his office, but I am not in his district or state.

http://www.ieer.org/campaign/Markey_102709_epa_radiation_letterfn.pdf

This is a brief summary of the campaign and major talking points for a healthy start RAD protection program for the US
http://www.ieer.org/campaign/talkingpoints2.pdf

You can find more solid information from this organization at http://www.ieer.org

And below are two good background resource articles I found earlier that further document this obsolete and inadequate REFERENCE MAN risk calculator still being used by other government agencies.
http://www.womensenews.org/story/health/071113/reference-man-may-lose-radiation-modeling-job
http://blog.cleveland.com/health/2009/01/feds_too_slow_in_revising_canc.html (This is an article I was prohibited from passing on to our braintrust,org meningioma list because I was told it is too scary. I believe they have a right to know what is going on and I felt an obligation to warn them to be more careful about how many CT scans they have, and would have suggested they ask for MRIs instead)

What can ordinary citizens like you and I do about this issue?

Please contact President Obama, the new Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, and Massachusetts House Rep Ed Markey with your own thoughts and opinions.

Simply ask them to make sure the most current scientific radiation risk data from BEIR VII 2005 is being used and published in all EPA materials on their website and in FDA medical device warnings about CT scans and in the radiation control standards used by all other government agencies relating to water, soil and air pollution particles from medical and industrial radioactive waste, including old xray equipment in dental offices and local community hospitals and other private medical facilities. Not just more piecemeal political patches and continuous procrastination with long draft revisions being passed around behind the scenes between advisory councils and committees etc as was done in the past. It is not being fully implemented by all other federal and state radiation control agencies like OSHA, FDA, FCC, NIOSH and NTIA hoping not to rock the boat for past administrations and now for the current administration.
The EPA recognized in a private response to me that their Radiation Protection Guidance report for diagnostic medical x rays FRG 9 is now thirty years old and they plan to revise it soon. Isn't that great news? (My sarcasm here) CT scans were not used by most doctors thirty years ago, and now almost every doctor uses them regularly for all their patients. And the federal and state government agencies responsible have still not solved the long term storage and transportion issues of removing radioactive waste from military, medical and industrial uses. How long has congress been discussing, debating and procrastinating on Yucca Mountain storage possiblities? And now they want to fund more nuclear reactors because we need more electricity, IMHO they like boys are playing with fire.

You can also copy your request and opinions to other Energy and Commerce Committee leaders, the Honorable Chairman Henry Waxman, the Honorable Joe Barton and the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment leader, the Honorable Fred Upton.

For congressional contact information go to www.congress.org or use the congressional widget located on my blog page. The mailing address for EPA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. is:

Administrator Lisa P. Jackson HQ
Environmental Protection Agency
Ariel Rios Bldg
1200 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20460
HQ Phone 202-564-4700 Fax her office at 202-501-1450
To send email: Jackson.LisaP@epa.gov