This is a bit bad and a bit old (last September). It's not just the fact that it is an audio masquerading as a video. It's not just the fact that the audio quality sucks. It boils down to the health physics of Wade Allison. Oh.....and it's a bit long.
He begins with why people fear radiation, but doesn't even mention things like fear of the unknown or the propaganda machine which exists. He continues on into the relative risks of different things. We can't see any transparencies so I can't comment on that subtopic.
At around 25 minutes he moves into comparing medical radiation exposure with contaminated food radiation exposure. He obviously doesn't understand stochastic effects. We don't give unnecessary medical radiation exposures due to the risk. If a doctor prescribes a certain radiation exposure it's because (or suppose to be because) the medical benefit exceeds the medical risk. It's not much different than surgery, which includes risk of infection or surgical error. Even if there was a history of one million successful surgeries, because we understand the underlying physical phenomena (pathogen and human behaviors), we don't conclude there is zero risk from surgery.
It is our understanding of carcinogenesis (which is incomplete and evolving) that informs us that even low doses of radiation are associated with cancer risk. The risks are small, but non-zero.
It's a bit funny how he talks about the tumor getting doses in mSv's. The Sv is a unit of total effective dose equivalent (TEDE). The TEDE is about cancer risk. A tumor doesn't get cancer, it is cancer! The dose should be in units of Gy (absorbed dose).
He seems to think carcinogenesis has its basis in the decline of the immune system with age. HA! It has to do with the accumulation of genetic damage with age. The immune system can play both a positive or negative role in cancer development. It can recognize cancer as foreign body and attack it. On the other hand, chronic inflammation has been linked to excess cancer risk.
At about 45 minutes he discusses excess cancers among the atom bomb survivors. He seems to be only focused on solid cancers, for which the excess risk below 100 mSv is very low. However, for leukemia, the excess risk is much higher.
Then he compares someone getting radiotherapy against the Fukushima dose limit and concludes the Fukushima limit is unreasonable. No, Wade, you're unreasonable. We have to look at the benefit and risk profile of each circumstance, not just compare the doses involved. No one would buy a house based on the cost of a box of cereal. You get more benefit from a house than a box of cereal, so you pay more for it. Similarly, we don't say a box of cereal should be hundreds of thousands of dollars because a house typically is.
Evacuations are serious and have their own risks. However, in light of the nuclear catastrophe going on just after an earthquake and a tsunami, with so much unknown, it's hard to objectively second guess the decision makers. It's easy to second guess after the fact, when you didn't experience the circumstances.
At about 52 minutes he criticizes the ICRP for employing ALARA and he kinda stutters so I'm not sure what his point was, other than they are wrong for doing so. I have a separate page on ALARA (and driving, check it out if interested). But shortly afterwards, he seems to insist that allowable Fukushima doses should be relative to radiotherapy doses. This seems to be his fixation.
He suggests the limit should be 100 mSv maximum in any month, and 5,000 mSv maximum over one's lifetime. He doesn't seem to understand the history of health physics. Dose limits have tightened over the decades because of the evidence of harm. The ICRP has learned from history, while Allison seems ignorant of it.
He says no one will die of the radiation from Fukushima! Of course not directly. It will increase folks' risks and there will be excess cases of cancer in Japan. It is doubtful it will be epidemiologically discernible.
Yuck! At about 1:02 he leans towards hormesis...he doesn't understand the limited phenomenon of adaptive response versus the general phenomenon of ionization of molecules.
He says radon concentration doesn't correlate with lung cancer! Now I'm suspicious. He seems to have moved from ignorance to lying. Since he previously extolled how studies were available on the Internet, here is an EPA link which includes links to two large radon epidemiological studies (one North American, the other European) which show an LNT relationship between radon progeny dose and lung cancer.
At about 1:15 someone asks him about cancers at Chernobyl, and he responds that we "aren't quite sure". That's another lie. The dose responses have been LNT. So, contrary to what he says, we do expect excess cancers from Fukushima, just not too many.
And to put the icing on the cake, at about 1:19 he recommends "taking on the authorities". Oh dear, that's a variant of the "Expelled" syndrome. The experts have reached different conclusions (for good reason), so they must be challenged in some way. It's a vast conspiracy!!
It's classic McLeroy irrationality. He's a creationist dentist who tells us that someone has to stand up to the experts! (His patients should leave him, as an example of "standing up to the experts (on dentistry in his case, assuming he has expertise)"):
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