Chance of Dying From Backscatter Radiation Same as Chance of Terrorism

>The major public health effect of concern at low doses of ionizing radiation is cancer. There is clear evidence of cancer induction at effective dose above about 200 mSv. Below an effective dose of about 100 mSv radiogenic cancer mortality risk estimates for all cancers is highly uncertain. 16 It is not possible to determine reliably whether a radiogenic risk is present in an X-ray screening population because of the high spontaneous incidence of cancer and multifactorial nature of disease causation 17.

>Use of collective dose to estimate public health impacts when large populations are exposed to trivial doses is inappropriate and not reasonable. The assumptions implicit in the collective dose calculation conceal large biological and statistical uncertainties.16 If an individual passenger is not harmed by X-ray screening then the population isn’t either.

"Inappropriate and not reasonable". Yet on his webpage (not submitted to peer review), he does exactly that.

From a utilitarian standpoint, the chance of dying from something is not the most important factor in deciding where to put resources.

I'd also say, the neither of these numbers can be known in any accuracy right now, and there would be fast disagreement on any guess at what they might be.

The author himself doesn't believe them. Here's what he (Peter Rez) says in the paper this is based on:

>The major public health effect of concern at low doses of ionizing radiation is cancer. There is clear evidence of cancer induction at effective dose above about 200 mSv. Below an effective dose of about 100 mSv radiogenic cancer mortality risk estimates for all cancers is highly uncertain. 16 It is not possible to determine reliably whether a radiogenic risk is present in an X-ray screening population because of the high spontaneous incidence of cancer and multifactorial nature of disease causation 17.

>Use of collective dose to estimate public health impacts when large populations are exposed to trivial doses is inappropriate and not reasonable. The assumptions implicit in the collective dose calculation conceal large biological and statistical uncertainties.16 If an individual passenger is not harmed by X-ray screening then the population isn’t either.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.public.asu.edu... (page 15)

linked from

http://www.public.asu.edu/~atppr/bodyscan.html

Actually that is false, as far as low doses:

>When you are asked whether there is a critical time period over which 1 rem of dose may have a greater biological impact than it might otherwise have, the answer is "No." One rem of dose is sufficiently low that whether it was delivered within one second or spread over a year or more, we would not expect any difference in biological effects.

https://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q8325.html

(For comparison, 1 uSv = 0.1 mrem).

>The risk of cancer is caused by DNA errors. Your cells are constantly checking and repairing your DNA for mutations and damage. They can usually repair or detect a low error rate

But in this dose regime, ionization events are so rare, that they are so far apart that no cell experiences more than one. There is no variation in error rate.