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Thursday, January 21, 2010

One More Reason to Drive: the Health Impact of Airport X-Rays

Airport Travelers To Get Ionizing X-Ray Radiation

Read this excerpt on the dangers of radiation:

A leading U.S. expert on the biological effects of X-radiation is Dr. John Gofman, Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Gofman's exhaustive research leads him to conclude that there is NO SAFE DOSE-LEVEL of ionizing radiation.13 His studies indicate that radiation from medical diagnostics and treatment is a causal co-factor in 50 percent of America's cancers and 60 percent of our ischemic (blood flow blockage) heart disease.14 He stresses that the frequency with which Americans are medically X-rayed "makes for a significant radiological impact."15

This highly credentialed nuclear physicist states: "The fact, that X-ray doses are so seldom measured, reflects the false assumption that doses do not matter...[but] they do matter enormously. And each bit of additional dose matters, because any X-ray photon may be the one which sets in motion the high-speed, high energy electron which causes a carcinogenic or atherogenic [smooth muscle] mutation. Such mutations rarely disappear. The higher their accumulated number in a population, the higher will be the population's mortality rates from radiation-induced cancer and ischemic heart disease."16

A report in the British medical journal Lancet noted that after breast mammograms were introduced in 1983, the incidence of ductal carcinoma (12 percent of breast cancer) increased by 328 percent, of which 200 percent was due to the use of mammography itself.17 A Lawrence Berkeley National Lab study has demonstrated that breast tissue is extremely susceptible to radiation-induced cancer,18 confirming warnings by numerous experts that mammograms can initiate the very cancers they may later identify.19 Dr. Gofman believes that medical radiation is a co-factor in 75 percent of breast cancer cases.20 So why would girls and women want their breast tissues irradiated every time they take a commercial flight?

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