The Linear-No-Threshold Line for Cancer Excess Relative Risk Based on Lagging Low Radiation Doses is Misleading.

The linear-no-threshold (LNT) model is currently used in low-dose-radiation cancer risk assessment and this practice is supported by organizations that include the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Lagging low radiation doses has been used in epidemiologic studies and this helps to justify reliance on an LNT function for excess relative risk (ERR) for cancer incidence. Some of the low dose is discarded (lagging of dose) with the remaining even smaller dose then treated as relevant for cancer induction. This presumed-relevant smaller dose can be expressed mathematically as D-L where D is the assigned total absorbed dose and L (

Because a low dose (eg, 10 mGy) is highly unlikely to cause cancer but may with high probability stimulate the body’s natural anticancer defenses, there is no well-founded scientific justification for radiation dose lagging in epidemiologic studies of cancer risk after exposure to low-dose radiation or for use of an LNT risk model. Lagging low doses and using other misinforming procedures (MisPros) in epidemiologic studies to make the LNT model appear acceptable is misleading. For low radiation doses and an appropriate null hypothesis of no radiation-induced cancers, blaming all observed cancers on very small doses (a dose-lagging consequence) rather than other risk factors is unscientific.