Cancer rates by state including Nevada Nuclear Test site.
Click image for larger view.

What About Humans and Nuclear Radiation?

This refers to Radiation Basics They Should Teach in High School

OK, they say, plants and animals are not as sensitive to radiation as once believed. They can even thrive under low-level radiation, even if artificial. What about humans?

There is a mountain of empirical evidence that humans are immune to low-level radiation or there is no measurable increase in cancer rates.

They often present uranium miners as proof that radon and exposure to any radioactive material causes increased cancer rates.

Is it the uranium-radon, or is it the fact mining is an occupation has elevated health risks? Breathing toxic metal-laden dust in hard rock mining can lead to cancer or other lung problems.

Now let us observe workers in these blue-collar occupations, such as mining, are disproportionately heavy smokers. 2-3 packs a day is standard. My mother died from smoking. To quote one study:

We observed high rates of smoking (28.1%) and current use of any tobacco product (41.7%) in New Jersey quarry/mine workers, a subsector of the extraction industry. The prevalence of current cigarette smoking was consistent with that reported nationally among extraction and construction workers.

I grew up around coal miners who died from lung cancer and-or black lung. The same kind of damage comes from cotton and rock dust, etc.

Studies also show that diesel exhaust, smoke from wood stoves, campfires, etc., can cause lung cancer.

Let's throw in genetics. Thousands of things, both artificial and natural, can "potentially" cause cancer. Most simply don't or can't be proven.

Attributing everything to secondhand smoke, radon, or too many cookies is politics and propaganda.

Ref. Diesel Exhaust Exposure in Miners Linked to Lung Cancer July 25, 2012, by Victoria A. Fisher , M.P.H.

To quote part of the study:

For never smokers and light-to-moderate smokers, the risk of lung cancer death increased with more diesel exhaust exposure. Non-smokers with the highest level of diesel exposure were seven times more likely to die from lung cancer than non-smokers in the lowest exposure category. In contrast, among miners who were heavy smokers, the risk of lung cancer death decreased with increasing levels of exposure...Heavy smokers might be more likely to clear diesel exhaust particulate matter from their lung than non-smokers, a phenomenon that has been reported previously among coal miners who smoke.

This study could suggest standard diesel, and auto exhaust could cause lung cancer in non-smokers. At the same time, before we get hysterical, cancer rates, particularly lung cancer, are falling.

The Nevada Nuclear Test Site lies 65 miles NW of Los Vegas with 928 nuclear detonations. The last was in 1992.

The fallout fell in large parts of Nevada and Utah. We should expect large numbers of cancer cases. In 2020 we found the opposite, according to CDC data.

Nevada has lower cancer rates than Iowa, Delaware, and Oregon and nearly the same as Rhode Island. Nevada has lower rates than most of the country.

Utah has almost the lowest rate in the nation. How can this be, screams environmentalists?

Nevada's rate per 100,000 in 2005 was 191, but it went down to 144 in 2020. Utah is nearly unchanged. The highest cancer rate state in 2005 was Kentucky at 219.1.

By 2020 cancer death rates in nearly every state had dropped by double digits in 15 years. The highest cancer rate state in 2020 was again Kentucky at 177.3, followed by West Virginia at 177.

Things continue to get better, to the dismay of environmental activists. As I said before, technology and reason is the key to solving problems, not socialism, green religion, or hysteria.

If low-level radiation causes all of this cancer, explain Nevada and Utah. The answer is simple: humans are not sensitive to low-level radiation. Radiation levels, even from nuclear weapons, levels rapidly decay.

Don't go to the Nevada Test site and eat a hand full of dirt. But tours are available to the public. This tour includes the 1,280-foot diameter by 320-foot deep Sedan Crater. Yes, it is a big hole in the ground among many.

Tours are to resume in 2022 after being closed three years over Covid.

More tour information at https://www.nnss.gov/docs/fact_sheets/DOENV_1033.pdf.

Guarapari, Brazil with safe radioactive beaches.
Guarapari is a coastal town of Espírito Santo, Brazil, a popular tourist destination.
Its beach is famous for the high natural radioactivity level of its sand.

Other Radioactive Places to Visit

There are other radioactive places to visit different than artificial sites such as Bikini Atoll (yes, there are tours to dive shipwrecks), Chernobyl, and the Nevada Test Site.

Beautiful Ramsar, Iran on of the most radioactive places in the world.

"Ramsar, a city on the northern coast of Iran (Fig. 1), has some of the highest known levels of naturally occurring background radiation in the world. In some areas of the city, the background radiation is around 260 mSv per year, which is much higher than the 20 mSv per year limit set for radiation workers in Iran....Not only were there fewer instances of chromosomal abnormalities in these areas, but one study found that the risk of lung cancer was actually lower in the areas with higher radiation. Radon exposure is widely accepted as a risk factor for lung cancer, yet in the areas of Ramsar with average levels of Radon, there was a significantly greater presence of lung cancer than in the areas with the highest Radon concentrations...This also directly contradicts the linear no-threshold model for radiation exposure. Those who lived in higher radiation areas also were found to live the same life expectancy as those in lower radiation areas, while all residents of Ramsar had the same life expectancy as those in neighboring areas with less background radiation."

Ref. Ramsar and Radioactivity, Sydney Lance, March 22, 2018.

Bristolblog.com is my other website. I'm a conservationist, I consider ecology a pseudo-religion. Some of the subjects covered: