Dr. Lauren Jackson addresses radiophobia

There's a way, a way such a better way today Today, the nation's voice tells the world there's a better way Today, there's a better way Ooh, there's a way, such a better way today Today, now region's voice tells the world there's a better way The way is the Adam's way Hey, this is right Adam's, I know it's been a long time since you've heard my silky voice I've been busy playing with kids, raising grandkids and enjoying life and taking a little break from the reality of working on a podcast But it's time for another one I came across a wonderful guest to be my first return to the podcast in world I heard her talking with Bill Nye, the science guy and I want to play a little bit of what I heard during that interview and see if you can understand why I thought she'd be a great guest for the renewal of the atomic show Sorry, I haven't traveled with my voice this morning anyway Take a listen and then we'll get right into the interview If you had one thing to tell the world about radiation, what would it be? That, you know, there is this fear of radiation that is not proportional to the real risks of radiation Doctor, it sounds like your work is just beginning It is Well, this has been a great discussion, Doctor, you are going to change the world By educating people about the true effects of radiation, it really is an important thing And for me, it's not just that both my parents had forms of cancer And I like anybody else, I'm concerned with cancer, I am of a certain age People from high school are no longer living because of cancer, that's bad And something worth thinking about But also, if we are going to embrace nuclear energy as a way to have zero carbon emission electricity In the coming years because we got to get it done We're going to want to understand the effects of radiation and how we manage it And so this is as big a picture idea as you can imagine Both individual medicine and the future of planet Earth for us humans You know, as we say Corey, the Earth is going to be or no matter what we do At least for a few billion years, we want to eventually We want to preserve things for us right now We have been sharing the microphones with Dr. Lauren Jackson, Associate Professor of Radiation Oncology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine School of Medicine And Deputy Director of Translational Radiation Sciences And Director of the Medical Counter-measure Program, also at the University of Maryland School of Medicine In Baltimore, Maryland, here in the United States, planet Earth Doctor, thank you so much for coming in and telling us about radiation It's just been a fantastic discussion, I'm looking for a pun It's been ionizing It's been raspid raspid raspid It's been raspid raspid raspid It's definitely been raspid Thank you And Doug, it's been raspid Thank you, Dr. Jackson After hearing Dr. Jackson speaking with Bill and I, I decided that you all needed to get a chance to listen more to what she has to say And to hear a young, very educated, highly professional doctor who is researching the health effects of high dose radiation And applying some of the things that she's learned to educating the public about the effects of lower doses Without further ado, here is Dr. Lauren Jackson, a guest on the first episode of the re-vamped re-energized atomic show It's actually number 268 of the whole series This is Rod Adams, and it's time for another atomic show And with me, I have a fascinating guest, Isabelle Laura Jackson, as her long name But I think she goes by Lauren And she is a radiobilologist, a specialist in the effects of high dose radiation on cancer patients And a few other people who have been exposed to high dose irradiation And she is employed by the University of Maryland, is a deputy director of the Division of Translational Radiation Sciences Within the Department of Radiation oncology Wow, what a mouthful I know, we should have thought about that a little bit Alright, welcome to the show, Lauren Well, thank you very much, I really, really appreciate you inviting me It's really nice to meet you, so I'm looking forward to our discussion Yeah, of course, I have never crossed paths with you, up until I listened to a recording of Bill Nye, the science guys Podcast called Science Rules And he will talk to you a bit about, I guess he was stimulated by some discussions after the HBO mini series called Chernobyl And I was particularly fascinated because my listeners will know that we've had a long-running animosity almost towards Bill Nye And his rather strong anti-nuclear feelings, it also, it's always confused many people that I know because Bill is also a very strong fighter defending the world against CO2 emissions And trying to reduce CO2 emissions so that we can have a more stable climate And it just is hard to reconcile those two positions, particularly from one who deals from a position of science When I was listening to you though, and talking to him, it sounded like he's suffering from a significant breakthrough Yeah, so I'm not familiar with his politics on that matter I would be honest, I've not been as focused on the nuclear power industry as much as I have been in recent more recently Especially with climate change and nuclear power is one of the safest, I think, forms of energy, a production And I think that most people in my field would agree with that And as we were talking earlier, there's this radio phobia just because people don't understand what radiation is And so yeah, I think Bill and I had a great discussion, I had met him a few weeks earlier at another meeting And we had a great discussion after that about nuclear power and risks And so certainly that when you emailed me, that was news to me, I didn't know that he felt that way He certainly didn't bring it up to me, but yeah, it was a great discussion, I think So hopefully he also believes that radiation is not that bad Well, you know, if you're listening to him talking about the accidents and as being such scary events And such, you know, world changing perceptions of why nuclear power is bad is that we had We can name the events Chernobyl and through my island and Fukushima But after you talked to him and said, well, these are what really the effects were, this is what really happened Maybe we ought to ask why are we so afraid of them and why are those events so famous when we, you know, very few people If you meet him on the street, I say, well, what about San Bruno? Mm-hmm Yeah, look at me and say, well, what does San Bruno? And I say, well, what about upper big branch mine? They may remember 29 coal miners died from a natural gas explosion there But they, but you know, San Bruno was writing people's neighborhoods for goodness sake Yeah You know what that was? I do not Oh, sorry Now, this is what makes my point You are a specialist in radiation biology And certainly, you know, the natural gas industry is not really in your field of work But just a few years ago, I think it was 2013 The city of San Bruno, California suffered a major natural gas pipeline rupture and explosion that ended up destroying 50 homes and killing eight people And forming an enormous crater in the middle of the suburb Wow Yeah, and I follow the news very, very closely I'm a bit of a political junkie, so, you know, if that is not something that I am familiar with I would imagine many, many other people are not Yeah, unless you live in San Bruno, they have a good lesson Yeah, exactly You know, and if you recall, there is another little bit of energy A political confusion from my mind The summer of 2010, the whole world was paying attention The fact that it was a rather large and stubborn oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico Remember that, yeah, the Deepwater Horizon Do you remember that that event started with a gas eruption that killed about 13 people On the rig And it was covered, you know, lots of interest in the news and that And suddenly, you know, they ended up after 90 days or something Finally got it, got it plugged and it sort of dropped away And people stopped thinking about it, well, it has never really changed our attitude towards using or drilling for, you know, oil Yet, March 2011, just a few months later, you know, there was an event at a nuclear power plant That occurred not as a result of, you know, natural risks of nuclear energy But caused because of a tsunami followed by, I mean, a huge earthquake followed by a large tsunami That flooded out of plant and caused it to lose power and eventually And caused three very brief explosions, not, you know, any submissive fire afterwards, no human casualties, no injuries from radiation But man, what a mess Absolutely From a political point of view Absolutely What do you think the world should have learned by watching that event and seeing what happened when people were evacuated And what happened when, you know, over time, as people were told that they were victims and that they connect, not go back to their homes and all that stuff What should we have learned? Yeah, that's a really, you bring up great, great points, you know, wasn't long after, you know, Fukushima, that I was at a meeting And there was an, I believe he was an admiral and he had been... been involved in the clean up, et cetera, and other response, I should say. And he made it, and he said, you know, we're sitting here, nobody died. It wasn't a cute radiation. Nobody developed a cute radiation sickness. The likelihood of anyone developing cancer, and I know that there was a lawsuit, and you know, they claimed that someone who died from lung cancer several years later, that that was caused by radiation, which for all intents and purposes, there's no way to suggest that latency period is way too short. So, and lung cancer caused by radiations, and they're different than lung cancer caused by, you know, natural, you know, other, environmental causes. So there's no way to distinguish it. So there's really no way to attribute that. But, you know, so nobody became ill. But you think about the environmental hazards, the, you know, what was it, 200 miles of coastline where you had, you know, how many chemical plants, you know, chemical spills. So, you know, many of these radioactive, you know, right in new class, they have seven day half lives, you know, 30 year half lives, you know, in chemicals, you're talking about thousands of years. And those are far more carcinogenic, you know, meogenic. So, you know, we're talking, you know, here, attributing, you know, what is the increased risk for cancer from radiation exposure, which is pretty much negligible versus, you know, chemical exposure, you know, just just as a perspective. You know, and I think that when you, you look at, you know, I've talked to other radiation biologists, one who lives in New Hampshire, who's a wonderful person. And he brought up, you know, actually Fukushima showed that containment does work. You didn't have the issue that you had a Chernobyl, you know, in Chernobyl was obviously a volatile accident. There was a fire. So it's a bit different. But, you know, containment does work. And so, you know, the perspective should have been switched. It should be, you know, actually that, you know, yes, you have accidents, like with anything else. But you don't, you know, it's not, um, yeah, I don't, I don't really know how to articulate that. Well, yeah, from a, from a health perspective, what level of dose would you be concerned enough to say that people ought to, to avoid it completely? And, you know, obviously, when you have to move from your home, or you have to let your community, you know, cows die and, and all that, I mean, all the major risks of, of evacuating or abandoning an area, what level of radiation do you think would be high enough that it would be a good risk management decision to avoid the radiation and accept all the other things? Yeah, that's a good question. You know, I mean, so so much socio, you know, most of the events, these types of events have much more repercussions on mental health. You know, socio-economic status, et cetera, than, you know, real biological health, you know, disease or whatnot. You know, I don't know that we really, and that's where the problem lies, right? Right? I mean, I don't know that we really know. I mean, my expertise is in high dose exposures where you're talking about, you know, developing bone marrow suppression that can cause, you know, infection, or that can lead to infection and, you know, potentially be life threatening in a few weeks to months after exposure. You know, when you start talking about doses, environmental doses, where it's, you know, chronic exposures, you know, in those cases, I don't think that we have, you know, so much information, you know, and that's why I think we said it's the bar so low, right? You know, the linear and the threshold model, we suggest that any dose of radiation can be potentially carcinogenic. And so you're going to evacuate anybody, you know, because you're not going allow people to live environments that might be contaminated. You know, there's too much risk there. Yeah, I don't know that we really, at least in my mind, what that level of exposure is, you know, I would like like you said, there are, you know, radiation is only one of many potential carcinogens. You know, radiation, I actually kind of bristle when people tell me that radiation causes cancer when I say, well, it actually contributes to the risk of cancer. Right, correct. Just, you know, like you said, you can't track, you can't, there are no biological markers yet, right? Right. And that's one of your areas of research, right? You look for, are there any ways to distinguish, you know, the damage caused by radiation from other pick, you know, damages and exposures and simply, you know, reactive oxygen species. In other words, breathing. Yep. Yeah, oxygen is very toxic, right? If your body didn't have a way to detoxify oxygen, it would be toxic. You know, and so, you know, the radiation itself, it's a lot of the injuries actually due to the biological response to the radiation. So yeah, you're absolutely right. And in the radiation exposure, particularly, you know, when you're talking about, you know, obviously low dose exposures, chronic exposures, you know, it can contribute to the risk against the natural background risk. And so it's very hard to distinguish, you know, to somebody develop lung cancer because they smoke, do they develop lung cancer because they happen to mean environment where they were exposed to low doses of radiation? Or did they develop lung cancer because they used to live in an area that was powered by nuclear energy and people for ages for fear shut down all the nuclear plants and started burning coal and oil, thus exposing them to more harmful pollutants. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I agree with you. You know, and like I said, I mean, but there's a lot that we don't know, but then, you know, exactly what about coal? Well, you know, it's interesting to me that we, even specialists like you, are still in the, in the, a lot that we don't know, era where, you know, we've been using radiation and been exposed. We know, we've known about radiation for about 120 years. Yeah. And we've been obviously always exposed to it. And we've known about the uncertainties and low doses for a long time. Why isn't there been more research done on exactly what's going on there? Yeah, exactly. So, and as I said, my, my, my, my, yeah, just, just, just as qualifier. My expertise is high doses. But with the low doses, the biggest issue is a, you don't have that many, and this is actually pointing to the safety of nuclear, the nuclear energy industry. You don't have that many events. So you don't really have the patient population to study and those events that have occurred, we're not far enough, you know, away from them to be able to say, hey, you know, in a general population, we're seeing, you know, 0.1% more of cancers than we would expect to see, right? So, you know, from a, you know, epidemiological standpoint, and there are a lot of people who, you know, studied epidemiology of, you know, chronic radiation exposure and whatnot around the world and who are far more, you know, experts at this than I am. You know, but, but, you know, from that, that is the biggest problem, you know, not a lot of accidents, thankfully, and not enough time post, you know, the events that have occurred to really see. I think that almost all epidemiologists who study this would agree that the risk for cancers, even people who are receiving high doses of radiation, you know, so I'm not talking about low, even high doses is, you know, not everybody who's exposed to radiation develops cancer. So, you know, that risk is still fairly small, right? And so I think that's it. The second is that we don't really have good models, you know, you, you know, for people who are involved in animal research, you know, if, you know, you can't follow general, you know, radiate, you can't expose animals to small doses of radiation, right, over their entire lifetime. It's very, would be very, very difficult to do. And so you don't really have a lot of the animal studies either, you know, that could support some of the epidemiology systems, but there have been some actually some nice studies, but as a student, but even those are somewhat inconclusive. So, you know, if you're talking about 1% increase in risk or 0.1% increase risk, you know, in my mind, that's not that big of a risk. Well, what about what you're feeling towards the people or towards the, not the people, towards the logic or the thought processes behind the idea that some radiation may be overall beneficial? There are, you know, a lot of people who believe that and I think empirically, you know, you've seen, you know, there are people who, you know, maybe that, you know, we've observed that maybe they had lotos as a radiation and they actually survived, you know, longer, didn't develop cancers. You know, there's definitely a lot of, well, I wouldn't say a lot, but there's definitely as some people who believe that a small doses of radiation can actually prime your body to be more resilient and resistant, you know, even to further radiation exposure. And I'll give you kind of an exam in analogy. So, in lung cancer patients who receive radiation therapy to treat their tumors, smokers are actually protected against developing radiation-related side effects. There's been numerous studies that have shown that. Do we, we don't know why, but this speculation is that because they have this chronic, you know, exposure to carcinogens, known carcinogens and that they actually have primed their lungs. They have higher levels of antioxidants, endogenous antioxidants that can better, you know, protect their healthy tissue from radiation. So, you know, cigarette smoke and low dose radiation exposure is not that different, you know, kind of same mechatological mechanisms. So, you know, it's a bit of analogy there that, you know, maybe as small doses of radiation could actually, you know, have a beneficial effect. Yeah. Again, if humans evolved in a environment and, of course, the radiation levels on planet Earth were higher than they are now because radiation is our natural radiation sources are decaying away, then it seems logical that our bodies would have also evolved some healing mechanisms. Now, one of the things that I think that is in your field of study, your research area, is you do study the healing of patients from high doses of radiation and the recovery of tissue. What, what kind of insights can you tell us about whether or not our bodies can heal? One of the, and one of the reasons I asked this is one of the underlying planks. of the linear no threshold Radiation dose response model is that all doses of radiation Arculative and that you can simply keep track of all of your doses and keep adding them up over time and that is what determines your overall risk But that Me to me assumes that there's no healing going on at all now Many of the proponents will say well repair mechanisms are are not perfect. So there's some damage that it came to age well I don't know if that's really I Mean some injuries may heal more slowly than others. Yeah, but is it Correct to say there's no healing No, I do not believe that there's no healing I mean so and this idea that normal tissues You know they have DNA repair mechanisms and they can repair and so you know this is the whole basis of what we call Fractionation schemes and radiation therapy where you split the radiation dose You know maybe two gray times you know 30 fractions for a total of 60 gray because the tumor cannot repair itself because there Defects and it's DNA repair Mechanisms, but the normal tissue can repair so you know that's the whole basis of the fractionation in clinic and we've been doing that for you know 20 30 years At least You know we see so for high doses exposure. So if there was for example, you know a nuclear bomb or radiological accident You know individuals who are exposed to about what we would say 50 centigrade You know you're gonna start to see some suppression of the you know Infection fighting white blood cells, but it's not gonna be life-threatening and that's going to spontaneously recover with no treatment people don't need hospitalization. They would need Any sort of treatment up at two gray That's when you start thinking saying okay Individuals probably need to go to the hospital probably need to be monitored and should start you know some sort of treatment to Recovery recovery of the white blood cells and we have three New three drugs that have been FDA approved specifically for that indication in the past four years and so You know and so at what we would call a lethal dose for 50 percent of the population And in the first you know month post exposure That's around with no treatment if they didn't receive any treatment through about three point five gray so Why we point here being that at three point five right 50 percent of the population would spontaneously recover with no treatment? So yes, so the body does you know can heal itself You know radiation damage to You know to DNA Especially in radiation is obviously complicated. I mean you're talking about you know highly to low-LED You know so it's it's you know chronic exposures high dose if you have cute exposure. So I'm talking about it just cute, you know whole body exposures here Yeah, I just want to be there and you know you know once you so it's a little bit complicated But yes scientists can complicate anything Alright, but you know at a basic level, you know the radiation traverses a cell, you know Some of the DNA might get hit Right and you might have some DNA that gets hit but it is a general you know usually a lot of the DNA That's not really you know some cells might die some cells might you know be able to repair and go on survive and then some are going to get hit at all You know and then you have but but it's when the radiation interacts with water and then it causes all the oxidative stress and Those molecules go on to you know attack, you know the DNA and protein machinery and you know those proteins in the cells so you know it's that response that starts to kind of generate a lot of these effects that happen afterwards sorry No, the oxygen stress to talk about it. Can you distinguish between? radiation induced oxygen stress and Regular old reactive oxygen Nope, you choose it. Okay. Nope and the cell mechanisms to deal with it are the exact same They would deal you know with for example, you know cigarette smoke and which cigarettes smoke by the way does have Polonium in it, but you know is that certainly had the stopped anybody from smoking? So you know well that that is why I managed to stay away from cigarette smoke because I was definitely not just I Think maybe we had said hey cigarette smoke, you know has some polonium, you know people might as well know I'm gonna stay away from You know I I I have a we've as we when we talked in before I started recording You mentioned that you initially thought you were to be gonna study political science and you were Enamored by the idea of going to Washington and getting immersed in in Power politics. Yeah nuclear non proliferation. Okay. Yeah You know it's it's uh That that was your focus even in graduate of high school was nuclear non proliferation Yeah, I was very interested. I mean I was a political junkie in general But yeah, I was very much interested in that was very much interested in kind of this idea of mutually assured destruction, you know during the during the Cold War and so you know and Yeah, and then I kind of digressed and move towards science and ended up now doing radiation countermeasure research I'm sure that some of your research involves You know working with DOD and thinking about the effects of Radiological dispersal devices and that kind of stuff is that accurate Yeah, so I don't work with the Department of Defense as much as the government has really I think Put a lot of this in the air under the biomedical advanced research and development authority or bar And then also the National Institute of allergy and infectious disease or NIAID and so they do the majority of DOD's also doing some work But but they're really you know driving a lot of this board They they funded the studies that got these three drugs approved to treat acute radiation sickness if there was an incident And they've been doing that for about almost 17 to 20 years now. I mean it's been a long time That we've really been you know focusing on in this area So let's let's see if we can put a perspective on the difference between the doses even the highest doses accumulated by some of the workers at Fukushima and the say the admission of Acute radiation syndrome. Let's say there's it's a concert and in order to get to acute radiation syndrome You have to have the price of admission how far away from the price of admission were the Workers at Fukushima that received Roughly 250 milligre How many how close were they to buying a ticket to acute radiation syndrome? No, we're near it You have to you and they would need to be up to your you're talking about 250 milligre They would have to be up to two gray Two gray So potentially life threatening so 250 milligre is is a Point two gray Yeah, yeah Okay, so so they need to save a lot they need to go back and and really work hard to get up to two gray From point two That's a long way or is it point out to I think it's point out to point out to Wow I'm trying to do this math in my head. This is why I have people who work with me who do really My my early career was in an area where people actually sat around and and did mental gymnastics We did math problems in our head and as a competition to keep ourselves sharp Yes, yeah, you don't have time to pull out of computer when you're trying to To achieve a firing solution with a torpedo No, I would imagine you do not I can do calculus. I was great at calculus, but you asked me to add two plus two in this But even 250 milligre. I think that's all the high end Well, that was just a worker. That was the most exposed workers got to the 250 milligre range And that was only a handful maybe a dozen of people got close to that But for the majority of the people they were down in the Several millisheverts Yes, correct. Yeah, and then you know people outside the gates were in the You know less than a millishevert Range and and the government of Japan You know vacillated but for the what the level needed to be to evacuate people with date ended up anybody was in an area That was projected to receive more than 20 millisheverts over a whole year 20 millishears a year was the level it would say set the evacuation that they thought it was important enough to get those people Away from their homes away from their loved ones away from their their property You know they lost all their property. They if they were farmers. They lost their cows If they were pet owners, they had to leave their dogs behind, you know Awesome. Some serious effects Yeah, in order to avoid the health effects of 20 millisheverts Which is another two orders of magnitude away from the point o2 Well anyway You're right. I mean did the threshold is so low? You know that in you know did this idea that any exposure can be deleterious and potentially increased risk. I mean You know somebody I remember you know You know having discussions about this right after Fukushima and you could you know if you were kind of outside that area You you basically would get more exposure just flying from New York to Tokyo. Mm-hmm. I mean this is not you know these are You know and people would do some people I'm sure disagree with me and but you know these are negligible doses You know especially when you start talking about CT scans and you know medical imaging that people get You know and it goes back to what you were talking about about this accumulating damage um You know the the consequences of you know Evacuating people at a dose that is so negligible this you know psychological consequences of that are so much more damaging Then the risk that they would ever see any sort of health consequence You know associated with those types of exposures One of the the things that I Sometimes challenge those who really emphasize that they're trying to be protective and they're trying to uh Use the LNT because it's a quote conservative model Is to to really challenge them on the notion of What are you protecting people from and are you really Trying to improve people's health Yeah, yeah, you know the intentions are good um and You know they want to set it, you know this you know as low as reasonably achievable um But I agree. I mean, what is... One of the things that I do is to try to help people overcome fears that are limiting them. In other words, I've taught my lifelong swimming teacher. I teach people to swim. I've been doing that since I was in high school, which is a long time ago. And, you know, swimming is an example to me of an activity that just has so many beneficial aspects to it. And the idea that people, you know, refrain from learning to swim because they're afraid to. And sometimes... Sometimes the child, of course, you know, if he catch kids young enough, it's not hard at all. Because they just love splashing in the water. And I haven't found a kid yet that is afraid. It's afraid of the water unless somebody taught them to be afraid. Yeah. Unless for some reason they've had a bad experience or maybe they've been around people that were afraid or they got warned to stay away from the water at all costs. And so, you know, one of the things I ask is why are people so afraid of radiation? Why have we, why have we as a society roughly been taught to fear it above all else? Because of the cold... you know, it's a great, you know, question. I mean, I think during the cold war, and that there is a big push out there to make people afraid of radiation to prevent nuclear war. And so it's, hey, you know, if it's this uber exaggeration of, you know, the effects of radiation and you know, if you get exposed, you know, you're going to have... your skin is going to fall off and you can have all these mutations. And if you don't, your skin doesn't fall off in a month, you're going to die from cancer. And it's just completely bogus to be, you know, but it's... Well, there are some skin injuries, but I digress. I mean, I'm trying to say, as a big picture here, that, you know, I think that they were trying to scare people. and scare the governments away from a nuclear war. And so, you know, people embrace this. And so, I mean, even now we talk about, we tell people, hey, you know, you'd want to limit your number CT scans because you might get cancer. So, you know, and I think those, you know, the people who really understand radiation have not done a great job, you know, trying to change the public perception. One of the... I was in a meeting in Munich, and, you know, several people brought up that instead of trying to change risk perception after an event, you know, and convince people who, you know, might have been exposed or have been in those environments that they're not at risk, we need to educate people before events happen. But, you know, I think that there's enormous amount of politics involved here. And, you know, and I just want to say, you know, there are, you know, when I talk about this, you know, it's skin-pointed, and this bogusness, I'm talking about it's not... You know, it's just this over-exaggeration of what the health effects of radiation are, you know, beyond what really happens. And, you know, when you're talking about high doses of radiation exposure, and then when you're talking about low doses, you know, you basically wouldn't even know you had been exposed unless somebody told you. Right. Well, you know, one of the... I know that the units of measure can sometimes confuse people, especially because many people who talk about radiation have been taught under different measuring schemes. And, you know, I grew up in the Navy and we were taught in REM, and nobody can even... Even my expert, you know, nuclear submarine colleagues refuse to recognize that they're relatively easy ways to understand the unit of measure, whether it's a REM or a rank-in or a gray or a seaver, there really isn't that big a difference. You know, there are fixed conversions between them, and it's not hard. So, you know, once you can actually talk about what is high, what is low, with a number on it, and help people understand how far away they are from, you know, if there's an atomic bomb that goes off, and you're not killed by the blast and the fire. So, if you were far enough away that that was didn't kill you, the doses that you're exposed to are actually moderate. They're in the, you know, 100 millig or 100 centigrade range. And that's pretty... That's... If you're really close to get to 100 centigrades, if you look at even the records from the atomic bomb explosions, the people that survived, and over those that didn't get killed by the blast and the fire, which is the real effect of nuclear weapons. That's correct. It's the pressure. Yeah. The lot of... Yes. You know, the gross pictures of people having their skin hanging off was probably not because they received a high dose of radiation. Because they received a high dose of thermal radiation. Yes. They got burned. That's right. They got burned. They had, you know, you have buildings collapsing. You know, you're talking about, you know, the PSI there. You know, you're talking about lungs collapsing. It's not... That was not radiation related. And so, you know, you've got blast traumas, thermal burns. Only about 15 percent of people actually heard of Hiroshima and Nagasaki where exposed to radiation only. 85 percent had some sort of combined injuries, thermal burns, blast injuries, etc. So that is actually the destructive force of, you know, a nuclear weapon. In addition to the radiation, but, you know, but you're right that if you're within, you know, outside of, you know, a couple miles radius, you're really not being exposed to, you know, very high doses of radiation. Right. And as you said, the survivors were really people who were all exposed to a number of different traumas, including simply the trauma of being hit by atomic bomb. I mean, you know, that's got to be, I would say everybody should qualify as PTSD people. If you're that close, right? It's a... And of course, you know, it's a population that was already, even without the bombing, was already under significant health stress by living in Japan in 1945 when people were eating roots of... You know, they weren't eating root vegetables. They were eating roots of trees and they had nothing left. They were, you know, at that point of the war, they were not healthy people in particular. So that's the population on which we base, you know, some of our radiation information. One of the challenges I also like to mention is there are many times when, as you said, people were taught to be afraid and the explanation is that what we really want to make sure the governments don't ever drop atomic bomb. So we want to make sure that the populations are so afraid of them that they'll force their governments to make better decisions. And, you know, at one point, the fear of radiation was actually stoked by those who wanted to stop the government from testing explosive weapons in the atmosphere. And the only way they could get the government's attention was to get people afraid of fallout. And, you're dispersing these harmful radioactive products on us. Of course, the levels from fallout are way, way down below the level which you can get harmed, but it helped the campaign. Yeah, and there was. And that's, and we've done a really good job at scaring people. Certainly, you know, the weapons testing they didn't, you know, the Marshall Islands and et cetera. I mean, you know, I'm, you know, that was very destructive. But, you know, we have scared people. And, you know, and I always say, you know, and being exposed to high doses of radiation is very bad. It's life threatening, you know, it can. But it's the risk perception, you know, how much can you be exposed to, you know, and that this, that, you know, there's very few people in the past 100 years that have been exposed to life threatening doses of radiation. So, I think, you know, just better educating people on, you know, so that they can better understand how, and reduce the psychological stress and fear. Yeah. And the psychological stress in some way, in some measure, and I'm not a psychologist, so I can't really speak on with authority on this, but it seems to me that if people didn't believe that every dose of radiation was harmful, and there was, if they never had been taught that they wouldn't be so afraid of small doses. And they wouldn't, thus, have the psychological effects of, you know, having been exposed and now for the rest of your life, they think, well, I've been exposed, I'm at higher risk. You know, my life is going to be shorter. Maybe I'll drink a little more because I'm going to die anyway. Maybe I'll, you know, do other behaviors that are not necessarily healthy because what the heck, I'm a victim already and I can't correct it. And those behaviors are, you know, also symptoms of depression. People self medicate. Yes. Well, yeah, depression is not healthy. No. You know, of course, if you've been forced to abandon your home, if it's a place like Fukushima, which apparently was a very pleasant place to live and had wonderful farm products and good fishing and all that stuff, you know, there's people that are harmed by that and you know, the people that were forced to leave Chernobyl and let's go back to Chernobyl for a minute. Part of the impetus for our discussion is your talk with Bill Nye about Chernobyl. What's the overall effect of Chernobyl? Did a million people die? No. No, I think it was, I think it was either 23 or 26 people actually died. And I think I think 146 developed acute radiation sickness, some degree, and only 23 or 26 people actually ended up dying. And you know, a lot of them had burns and, you know, because the volatile explosion. It's never a good idea to correct the scientist's guest on a show, but I do, I do know the number off top of my head is 28. 28. That's a very specific number. And it just came up in an email conversation amongst some experts that I chat with on a regular basis yesterday. There was 28 people out of the 147 that did get ARS. They had enough for the ticket. They got more than two great. Yeah. Some of them got exposed to very high doses. I think there was somebody, I think the highest dose survivor was somewhere between 5 and 6. Gray, but it could be wrong on that one. And, you know, some of those actually died from graft versus host disease because they got buried bone marrow transplants. And they developed graft versus host. post disease. So that's certainly informed us now on how we would treat a mass causal disease situation. If there was a rad nuke, a radiologic or nuclear event. But you're right. I mean, it was, I mean, it was few deaths. It was not a hundred thousand. And I've seen in the public people are saying, was a million people have died because of the Soviets lied. And, you know, and, you know, at least people have developed cancers. And you know, there's just not an epidemiological basis for that. I mean, there are certainly children developed thyroid cancers. You know, in the seven years or so, you know, afterwards. And a lot of that was just because they didn't take, you know, cut the milk supply. children were drinking milk. And there was, you know, reactive iodide in the milk. And so, you know, and they weren't treated with potassium iodide. So, you know, there are some. But, you know, we have better policies in place on how you would deal with that early environmental contamination. Now, you are of the opinion that one or have stated in several publications, one of the best ways to avoid having actual harm if a cloud of radioactive material passover used to shelter in place. Yes. Shelter in place. So, how does that help you? So, you know, we talk about, you know, how do you protect yourself from radiation exposure, time, distance, and shielding? And so, if you get inside a concrete still reinforced structure, the radiation, you're not going to be exposed to that external radiation. You're going to be shielded because there's insufficient, you know, thickness there. So, that's the shine you're talking about. Just the actual. Yep. And those that would come from the cloud of material. Exactly. And, you know, so you can be either, you know, you can have radiation contamination. So you would want to, you know, take your clothes off and wash with soap and water to get rid of and you can get rid of almost any potential contamination. And so, we talked about what we're talking about. You know, radiation that is not deeply penetrating in those cases that you would really have to ingest or get, you know, contaminated with the wound to, you know, cause damage. And then if you stay, you know, we stay stay inside for at least 24 hours because, you know, the fallout, so all that right, you know, activity that is, you know, attached to debris or whatnot should be on the ground within 24 hours. And so, and then stay tuned. So, you know, listen to the radio, listen to first responders, instructions on what to do. You know, some people think that, you know, if a bomb or detonate in DC, you would be at risk in California, you would not be at risk in California, you know. You wouldn't even be at risk if you live in Colombia. No, no, so, you know, it's just, you know, economically, totally different. You know, we talk about economics of such as, you know, you know, that was dating event. But from radiation from a health effect, exactly. so, but yet, so you can significantly protect yourself. You know, if you can't get into a concrete building, you know, basements, a window, a space meant anything you can get inside and to the middle as far away from windows and whatnot as possible. You can, you know, significantly reduce your risk of being exposed to very high doses of reheat. So what if I'm walking around and I happen to have a radiation detection device in my pocket? Do I have to follow that advice or can I just measure what's going on and go from there? Well, if it were me, if I'm understanding your question, right, I would go inside. Even if you were able to measure, you know, people are telling you that there's a radiation coming and if you've got a device and it says, hey, we're still, you know, measuring roughly background or just maybe just slightly above background. Do I need shielding in that case? I guess it depends on, you know, what you, if you are, you know, for example, upward Chernobyl, you know, people are starting to detect a little bit higher than background doses, sites, you know, countries, you know, bordering countries, you know, no, they don't need to be, you know, they don't need to get inside, say inside. You know, I'm talking about really being in that, let's say four or five mile radius of ground. You know, if you're at here at ground zero, then half a mile or a mile radius, you're probably going to have some severe injuries there, but you're going to have a lot of blast traumas and other things. You know, that's if it's a bomb. That's if it's a bomb. That's if it's a nuclear reactor accident. Yeah, it's nuclear reactor accident. You know, it was above, you know, slightly above background, no, you wouldn't necessarily need to go inside. One of the reasons I asked, because there was a time when believe it or not, there was a national security risk perception from allowing people to have their own radiation detection devices. Really? Yeah. This is one of the trivia things that I discovered as I was reviewing history. But when the US and the Soviets were both doing atmospheric testing, the ways that we were able to detect and also calculate what had gone off and how big it was and where it was and all stuff was by measuring the radio new clouds. And there was a some recognition by people that that those radio new clouds weren't, they weren't tagged and said, these are for official use only or anything. Everybody with a detector could find them and could start running similar analysis if they had, you know, adequate training. It wasn't even that complicated to training. So that there was an effort to keep radiation detection devices under only approved hands. So that the general public wouldn't go out and start measuring things and getting excited about bombs and maybe even, you know, coming up with numbers that might be useful to the enemy. That's it. Go ahead. Now where we're talking about, you know, can you put this in cell phones? You know, can you make your iPhone, you know, basically the simitter that would detect radiation and, you know, so that's exactly what I was going with the fact that the charged couple devices that make our iPhone such cool cameras actually can detect radiation if they're properly set up. And all it takes is having a little window that can separate out the photons from the gamma rays. And you can actually turn your iPhone into a radiation detector. And I have several friends who have, there's apps out there. You can do it. There's an effort that, by the way. Oh, there's not for everything. These people are way smarter than I am. So that's awesome. So we really do have the way to the ability to detect and find out if we have radiation doses high enough to worry about. And, you know, I think that as it, as it, you know, someone who's concerned about public health, that reducing worry and helping people be concerned about what they really need to be concerned about is a worthwhile thing to do. Yeah. I completely agree with you. So I'll close with a little bit of a thought process for, for maybe you to consider as you go forth in your science and your thoughts about politics because politics often revolve around money and keep ono who benefits. And I kind of get them used when people say, well, the Soviets had all kinds of motive to hide the effects of Chernobyl because they really wanted to continue operating nuclear plants and that it was bad. They were really trying to cover it up because they didn't want to lose that ability. And I say, but the Soviet Union and Russia has had 30 years worth of enormous financial benefits as a result of scaring people away from nuclear energy. Because the biggest source of income for this Russian government today is still selling oil and gas to Europe. That's true. And they sell a lot more oil and gas to Europe as a result of having done Fukushima than they would have Fukushima. I mean, I mean, as result of doing Chernobyl, then they would have if Chernobyl had never blown up. Because Germany has abandoned their nuclear program. Italy shut theirs down right away. Other countries have stopped investing in new nuclear. All the other RBMKs, the Lithuanian reactors and all that stuff were forced to shut down as a result of Chernobyl. So maybe the Soviets actually benefited by pretending to hide things and by acting like nuclear was so dangerous and deadly. They actually benefited. Yeah, that's very interesting perspective. I don't know enough on that side. But I certainly think that there's obviously a very big oil lobby in the US and elsewhere. That certainly does not want nuclear power. Because it chips into their profit margins. And so, yeah. And we know how to handle nuclear waste now. Very well, we know it's very safe technology overall. So I'm a proponent of nuclear energy. Yeah. And in a time where we are really concerned and we rightfully are concerned about the effects of continuing to dump 30 billion, 35 billion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere every year. Maybe we really are afraid of the wrong thing here. Yeah. Yeah, I completely agree. And that's where that perspective has to come in. And what is really what they invite more the environmental contaminant coal, oil that's much more environmentally harmful than nuclear power. If so, Dr. Jackson, what else can you share with us? Do you have any parting words for the atomic insights crowd? Just that we need to do a better job at educating the public about the real risks of radiation. You're talking about different ways you can be exposed, whether you're exposed from a radiological dispersal device, which is probably going to have more economic consequences than health consequences. And nuclear melt down, which is probably not is going to have again more psychological consequences than health. consequences for the vast majority of the population in the surrounding area. And so we just, we need to do a much better job at risk perception. And then also, you know, what do you have to protect yourself? You know, if there was, you know, some sort of nuclear event. Yep. And well, that's what we're about. That's what we did today. We are going to share this widely and try to help more people understand what they really should be worried about. And I mean, there certainly are concerns about radiation. But, you know, it's something to be understood that necessarily to be feared. That's right. And, you know, I'm always up for a good debate or discussion. So I know there's a lot of people who believe in the linear and threshold model. I don't have personally a few, one way or the other right now. But I think that, yeah, I think that we have to do a much better job at educating the public. Yeah. I don't. I'm, I'm rather an agnostic person. I try not to believe in anything. I agree with you there. Without evidence, right? Yep. I'm an exact same way. Exactly. So I'm always willing to change my mind if you give me the good science to support it. And that may be the good political science because, by the way, the linear and no threshold response was imposed as a result of a report that was 100% funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Now, they did choose a rather credible organization to fund to do the report, the National Academy of Sciences. But the Rockefeller Foundation provided all the money and provided rewards to the scientists on the committee once they produce a report that said radiation is bad. Wow. Now why would the Rockefeller oil soap Rockefeller Foundation want to have a report like that? I don't know. No idea. I have my suspicions. All right. Well, thank you very much. All right. Bye. I hope you all enjoyed this show. The discussion with Dr. Jackson and hope that y'all, if you feel compelled, send me an email. Just welcome me back to the world of podcasting. It will be great to hear some feedback from you all to determine whether or not it's worth my time and effort to add my voice back to the fray. Let's you hear what's going on. Listen to some interesting guests and maybe some more panel discussions with my stable of good friends who know a lot about nuclear energy. If you feel compelled also go and add a review on iTunes and let's get some attention being paid to this show. Thank you very much. Take care. And let's have an atomic revival. Let's hear it for atomic revivals. Can't wait to see how things play out. Bye. There's a way, a way such a better way today. Today, a racial voice till the world has a better way. Today, there's a better way. Ooh, there's a way such a better way today. Today, now, a racial voice till the world has a better way. Today, there's a better way.