The Low Level Radiation Campaign

The Low Level Radiation Campaign is primarily focused on advancing the theory that there is a relationship between Low Levels of radiation and negative health effects. Although the primary focus is on ionising radiation, there have recently been studies on the possible negative health effects of non-ionising radiation.

An idea central to the claims made by the LLRC, is that the negative health effects of radiation have been considerably underestimated by official agencies. While LLRC maintains that the risks of external radiation dose are reasonably well described by the International Commission on Radiological Protection, the LLRC also maintains that the risk due to radioactive material uptake is underestimated. The LLRC theorizes that, in many circumstances, internal radiation is far more dangerous than predicted by the ICRP's models.

Studies endorsed by the LLRC relate to cancer induction on the cellular level caused by radioactive isotopes released by industries which use the radioactive material. The LLRC web site contains a variety of articles on the subject.

The LLRC was started in 1993 under the aegis of the Green Party but in 1996 it became independent due to a grant from the Goldsmith Foundation. In 1999 it was registered by Companies House as a Company Limited by Guarantee.

Central thesis of the LLRC
LLRC contends that radiation protection standards are fundamentally flawed based on two basic grounds. First is the idea that radiation dose is an average energy transfer into large volumes of undifferentiated body tissue separate from internal radiation sources and from the radioactive decay of unstable elements within the body. LLRC cites a number of authorities who have criticised this on conceptual grounds.

Second, is the idea that estimates of health hazards are based primarily on the Life-Span Studies (LSS) of the health of people who survived exposure to acute external irradiation from the Atomic Bombs detonated on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. LLRC points out that the LSS suffers from a series of methodological flaws which include

* Selective recruitment of the study group, as the studies didn't begin until five years after the bombings. This has resulted in many early deaths being excluded wrongly from the study.

* Poor choice of the control group. The LLRC consider this a very serious flaw as the control group (a supposedly unexposed population) was drawn from the populations of the bombed cities, so that both the study group and control group were equally contaminated by activation products and fission products. For this reason the Life-Span Studies are held to be silent on the effects of fallout and informative only on the effects of acute instantaneous external irradiation by gamma-rays, X-rays and neutrons from the explosion of the bombs. The LLRC states that it is not scientifically valid to believe that the effects of high dose, high dose rate, acute external irradiation reliably predict the effects of low dose, low dose rate, chronic internal irradiation.

The official French radiation risk agency IRSN (Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire) and the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR) have given support to the point of view of the LLRC. The IRSN have reported that it is reasonable for the ECRR to have reservations about ICRP's recommendations on radiation risk, since ICRP bases its advice on the health effects of external radiation from atomic bombs. However, IRSN have stated that arguments of the ECRR are not convincing" and that the ECRR "are not using a strict and constant scientific approach. The main conclusion of the IRSN is that further research is required on a series of topics before a final conclusion can be made.

The LLRC's response, as stated in a number of public meetings including a mass lobby of the House of Commons, London in February 2007, is that the European Committee accepts that its approach is an approximation but that there is a pressing and present need for further and more strict regulation of radioactive releases. They argue that waiting for the results of research (which may take many years to perform) is not a reasonable option. The ECRR propose new weighting factors for immediate, interim use to compensate for the shortcomings of the ICRP approach.

Personnel

Dr. Christopher Busby is the principal scientific adviser to the Low Level Radiation Campaign. Dr. Busby is a Director of research consultancy Green Audit, a past member of CERRIE (the UK Government's Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters) and the Ministry of Defence Depleted Uranium Oversight Board. He is Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk.

He holds a PhD in Chemical physics issued by University of Kent (Canterbury on the topic of Raman spectroscopy at metal surfaces).

Dr. Busby has been interested in the relationship between radiation and human health since 1987.

Richard Bramhall is a founder member of the Low Level Radiation Campaign and is its Company Secretary. He is a retired professional double bass player, originally trained at the Royal College of Music in London in the 1960s. He worked in many orchestras beginning with the Royal Opera House when he left the RCM in 1969, then the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and at various times the English Chamber Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra.

According to the Cerrie web site, he holds the view that he is an informed non-scientist with a considerable track record of reporting developments in the field of radiation protection to an actively interested constituency of policy makers, journalists and members of the public both in the UK and abroad. He has had many years experience of Stakeholder Dialogue in the United Kingdom, working with representatives of government, regulators, the nuclear industry and other non-government organisations on issues concerned with radioactive waste, contaminated land and contaminated materials.

Criticism from other scientists
In 2002 it was claimed by David Cartwright, a spokesperson for the British Nuclear industry, that "Dr Busby runs his own anti-nuclear company and makes a living out of producing these anti-nuclear reports"

In addition other scientists in the field have attempted to recreate the work of Busby and have been unable to do so, which they claim implies that Chris Busby's hypothesis may be incorrect and even that data has been "wrongly manipulated" and that "numerous methodological problems" exist within Chris Busby's paper on the relationship between the proximity to the Irish Sea and cancer. Dr. Busby and his colleague Professor V. Howard have even suggested that the paper cited above was based on an elementary error which inflated the base population . However the reply to that letter showed that this apparent error was in fact closer to reality of the LLRC data. This was coded using an obsolete and inaccurately system, now superseded by postcodes and it can be shown that coders tended to allocate rural addresses to the nearest town. Sometimes they allocated them to locations miles away. So the cases actually came from a much wider area than the census wards listed by LLRC. They do not fit any census boundaries. In other words they were comparing proverbial "apples with oranges". COMARE (the UK advisory Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment) acknowledged the apparent error but unanimously supported the alternative findings based on individually post coded data which can accurately be related to census ward boundaries. Using these data no cluster can be found.. In a presentation to COMARE Dr Busby's work has been shown to be fundamentally flawed.This is a feature of most of his work considered by COMARE (see relevant Statements). In fact Dr Busby has made numerous well documented statistical and data manipulation errors in this and similar work. From his own book he admits to using two versions of the Welsh leukaemia data one correct one and one incorrect one with twice the number of cases,which he used to publish his misleading and erroneous reports on the Irish Sea. Neither Dr Busby or Professor Howard have had any training in statistics or epidemiology. Dr Busby's curriculum vitae may not be what it appears to be at first sight This lack of knowledge is apparent in the poor standard of their work. Dr Busby made elementary statistical errors in his own book which illustrate this deficiency (see comment on this 17/05/08) The final conclusion of a government committee, which included LLRC members, and met at public expense over three years, was that there is not a shred of scientific evidence to support the LLRC theory. As science progresses by rejecting such flawed theories, most scientists would by now have consigned it to the waste bin. LLRC however unable to contemplate that their theory is wrong have developed an over-elaborate and implausible explanation in the Pre-Copernican mould e.g. wheels within wheels .They explain the discrepances between the real data and that predicted by their theory by claiming the existence of a conspiracy by cancer registries to cover up data. In the final analysis it is all a matter of personal belief - even if this is the radiobiological equivalent of a naive belief in a "Flat earth with turtles all the way down".

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu