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SHOCK AND surprise were expressed by the committee83 on genetics in its finding that the American public was using up about one third of the safety limit in medical and dental X-rays. Its members called on the medical profession to reduce the use of X-rays to the lowest limit consistent with medical necessity.
This committee also urged a national system of personal records whereby every American would know his total amount of exposure. The effect of radiation is cumulative, it is said, no matter how long the period over which it is experienced.
The six committees studied the radiation problem in the fields of genetics, pathology, meteorology, oceanography and fisheries, agriculture and food supplies, and disposal and dispersal of radioactive wastes. ...
Pathological effects: Dr. Shields Warren, Chairman-Recommendations will be made in the future. The committee concluded in agreement with geneticists that radiation, no matter how small the dose, shortens life in some degree. ...
Dr. Weaver's genetics committee recommended as a general population safety limit that exposure to radiation should be held down to 10 roentgens for the first 30 years of a person's life. A roentgen is a unit for measuring the harmful gamma ray from medical and dental X-ray equipment, nuclear weapons explosions and from natural causes like cosmic rays and natural radium.
As a result of medical X-rays it is estimated that each person in this country receives on the average a total accumulated dose to the gonads or sex glands about three roentgens in 30 years. "Of course, some persons get none at all; others may get a good deal. ..." Dr. Weaver declared it was "stupid genetically" to use X-ray for the fitting of shoes. He was referring to the X-ray devices that have become common in shoe stores and into which children often stare in awe, sometimes without regard to time at the shadows of the bones of their feet.
Dr. Weaver also condemned obstetricians who make X-ray pictures of pregnant mothers to show them how "beautifully formed" is the skeleton of their baby without realizing the "hazards" of the dose of three or four roentgens that is being administered.
In addition to six long summary reports of the committees, the scientists also issued "a report to the public" in the simplest language possible. Here the layman may read how radiation damage inevitably results from exposure, no matter how small the dose.
Radiation causes mutation or harmful changes in the genes or germ cells of the reproductive organs. Damage manifests itself in shortening of the life span, reduces ability to produce children, and sometimes, but not often, produces deformed or freakish children.
Even if the mutations is in one gene, there is some harmful effect that mutation will go on through every generation until the line that bears it becomes extinct.
The report explained how "every cell of a person's body contains a great collection, passed down from the parents, the parents' parents, and so on back, of diverse heredity units called genes."
The layman's report went on to explain:
"From the point of view of the total and eventual damage to the entire population, every mutation causes roughly the same amount of harm. This is because mutant genes can only disappear when the inheritance line in which they are carried dies out. In cases of severe and obvious damage this may happen in the first generation; in other cases it may require hundreds of generations."
"Thus, for the general population, and in the long run, a little radiation to a lot of people is as harmful as a lot of radiation to a few, since the total number of mutant genes can be the same in the two cases."
But damage to future generations due to radiation will be difficult to identify. The study of genetics damage has only just begun, with a report due on genetic effects observed in the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese cities destroyed by American atom bombs in World War II. ...
The committee said the radiologists "may well receive doses in the course of their occupation ranging from very slight to about 1,000 roentgens."
In fixing a "reasonably safety" limit of 10 roentgens, the Weaver panel commented, "not harmless, mind you, but reasonable." Of this safety limit, the panel said, "we are now using on the average some three or four roentgens for medical X-rays."
"This is roughly the same as the unavoidable dose received from background radiation," the weaver panel added. "It is really very surprising and disturbing to realize that this figure is so large, and clearly it is prudent to examine this situation carefully. It is folly to incur any X-ray exposure to the gonads which can be avoided without impairing medical service or progress."
While there exists no way of measuring a dose of radiation sustained by sex organs, the Weaver committee said that unless shielding was used some part of every dental or medical X-ray reached these organs. They said a dental X-ray would deliver about 0.005 roentgen to the gonads, and a general fluoroscopic examination two or more roentgens.
In the last 10 years science has introduced into the cancer therapy isotopes; radioactive iodine, cobalt, phosphorus, strontium, as well as proteins and hormones. In the beginning there was a lot of optimism about the new methods, but a great disillusion soon followed. (End of report.)
My own experiences show that the majority of patients who had 40 to 80 deep X-ray treatments and, in addition, 16 to 40 Cobalt treatments could not recover at all. Some improved after a much longer period and others only partially.
The following appeared in an article on radiation in the New York Times on July 21, 1957:
As a safety limit, the National Academy of Sciences has recommended, that the average person receive not more than ten roentgens of man-made radiation to the reproductive organs from conception to the age of 30.
The roentgen is a unit of measurement of radiation dose.
The report also lends new support to the repeated warnings of atomic officials and scientists that man faces a far greater danger from medical use of radiation than he does from the radio-active fall-out from atomic testings.
A similar warning came last month from Dr. Leroy E. Burney, Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service, who said that in view of the increasing sources of radiation in the nuclear age, the time had come to reassess the safe levels of radiation from medical treatment.
In recent years there has been an increasing awareness in the medical profession of the potential danger of radiation from X-ray treatments, and steps have been instituted to limit the radiation dose.
The report states that the estimate is probably accurate to within a factor or two. In other words, the thirty-year dose to the gonads could be as low as two Roentgens and as high as eight Roentgens. The belief among some radiation experts is that, if anything, the estimate is on the high side.
Because of the inevitable uncertainty of statistical analyses of limited data, scientists are recommending that a population sampling program be undertaken to determine more exactly how much X-ray radiation is received by the average person.
Such sampling program is to be recommended to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation by the International Commissions on Radiological Protection and Radiological Units and Measurements.