Environmental research
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Environmental research · Apr 2017
Ambient air pollution and primary liver cancer incidence in four European cohorts within the ESCAPE project.
Tobacco smoke exposure increases the risk of cancer in the liver, but little is known about the possible risk associated with exposure to ambient air pollution. ⋯ The results provide suggestive evidence that ambient air pollution may increase the risk of liver cancer. Confidence intervals for associations with NO2 and NOX were narrower than for the other exposures.
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Environmental research · Apr 2017
Review Historical ArticleThe threshold vs LNT showdown: Dose rate findings exposed flaws in the LNT model part 2. How a mistake led BEIR I to adopt LNT.
This paper reveals that nearly 25 years after the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR) I Committee (1972) used Russell's dose-rate data to support the adoption of the linear-no-threshold (LNT) dose response model for genetic and cancer risk assessment, Russell acknowledged a significant under-reporting of the mutation rate of the historical control group. This error, which was unknown to BEIR I, had profound implications, leading it to incorrectly adopt the LNT model, which was a decision that profoundly changed the course of risk assessment for radiation and chemicals to the present.
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Environmental research · Apr 2017
Review Historical ArticleThe threshold vs LNT showdown: Dose rate findings exposed flaws in the LNT model part 1. The Russell-Muller debate.
This paper assesses the discovery of the dose-rate effect in radiation genetics and how it challenged fundamental tenets of the linear non-threshold (LNT) dose response model, including the assumptions that all mutational damage is cumulative and irreversible and that the dose-response is linear at low doses. Newly uncovered historical information also describes how a key 1964 report by the International Commission for Radiological Protection (ICRP) addressed the effects of dose rate in the assessment of genetic risk. This unique story involves assessments by two leading radiation geneticists, Hermann J. ⋯ Russell, who independently argued that the report's Genetic Summary Section on dose rate was incorrect while simultaneously offering vastly different views as to what the report's summary should have contained. This paper reveals occurrences of scientific disagreements, how conflicts were resolved, which view(s) prevailed and why. During this process the Nobel Laureate, Muller, provided incorrect information to the ICRP in what appears to have been an attempt to manipulate the decision-making process and to prevent the dose-rate concept from being adopted into risk assessment practices.