The US radium luminisers: a case for a policy of 'below regulatory concern'

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Abstract
Presents dose-response data from US female workers who were exposed to radium through the painting of luminous dials. Lognormal analyses were done for radium-induced bone sarcomas and head carcinomas after the respective dose populations were determined to be lognormally distributed. The geometric mean and standard deviation for each dose population were used to construct lognormal distributions for comparisons. Luminisers with average measured skeletal doses below 10 Gy (1,391 subjects) showed no incidence of cancer. A primary purpose of the author is to illustrate the strong case that 226,228Ra is representative of radionuclides that have in humans a 'threshold' dose, or a dose below which there should be little concern for regulation. It is time to evaluate the data objectively instead of formatting the extrapolation scheme beforehand and forcing the data to fit a preconceived pattern such as linearity through the dose-effect origin. It is also time to re-evaluate (again) variations in background radiation levels throughout the world and to cease being concerned with, and regulating against, miniscule doses for which no biomedical effects on humans have ever been satisfactorily quantified.