Why Get Involved
The graph below shows how cancer rates were affected by low levels of radiation from the studies of some population groups who were exposed to the radiation. The cancer rates, instead of going up as predicted by the LNT model, went down.
Figure legend:
LNT model Prediction - Using BEIR VII Report (NRC, 2006)
Taiwan - Residents of radio-contaminated apartments in Taiwan (Hwang, 2006)
NSWS - Radiation workers in Nuclear Shipyard Worker Study (Sponsler, 2005)
British Radiologists - British Radiologists who entered service during the period 1955-1979 (Berrington, 2001)
Mayak - Evacuated residents of villages near Mayak Nulcear Weapons Facility (Kostyuchenko, 1994)
How successful have we been in reducing cancers in the past 50 years? Incidence of lung cancer, which is the leading cause of cancer death, has reduced considerably since the early 1990s due to the success of smoking cessation campaign that began in the 1960s.
For all cancers, there has been some reduction in age-adjusted mortality rates since the early 1990s (Murphy, 2015).
Regarding this cancer reduction, Thun et al. (2006) state “without reductions in smoking, there would have been virtually no reduction in overall cancer mortality in either men or women since the early 1990s”.
Thus, our current approaches (except for the campaign against smoking) have not been successful in reducing cancers.
Low-dose radiation has shown much higher reduction of cancers but has not been used because of public fear and concerns regarding low-dose radiation based on the current use of the LNT model. Eliminating the use of the LNT model will reduce the fear of low-dose radiation, enable study and use of low-dose radiation to prevent cancers, and result in considerable reduction in cancers.
Hence, the mission of the XLNT Foundation is to educate the public on the observed beneficial health effects of low-dose ionizing radiation, and to campaign for eliminating use of the linear no-threshold (LNT) model in order to enhance public health.
XLNT Foundation has a plan of action for educating the public and for eliminating the use of the LNT model by government by challenging the present regulations. These efforts would require considerable resources.
If you are satisfied with the current rate of progress in reducing cancers, and are willing to accept the present 30% lifetime risk of being diagnosed with cancers, there is no need for any action on your part with regard to the XLNT Foundation efforts. However, if you are concerned about cancer, and would like to reduce the risk of cancer considerably below the current levels, you ought to help the Foundation in its efforts by contributing generously.
The need is urgent. For every day that we delay discarding the LNT model, there would be >4000 unnecessary cancer deaths worldwide.
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