If you're not familiar with Calabrese, search his name on this blog. See pages (upper right of this page) "Hormesis - Ideological Toxicology" and "Comparing The Creationist & Hormesis Cults".
Let's dig in....
Why is this technical discussion on YouTube?
To distribute propaganda and to make it easy for others to do so.
BTW, the International Dose-Response Society is Calabrese's society. And the speaker (Jirtle) was invited by Calabrese to speak at the meeting. This is all about Calabrese and his narcissistic need for hormesis. Note that at about 2:00 they refer to Society of Toxicology meetings. That's NOT where they're at (see text under video)! They're at Calabrese's bizarro version of a SoT meeting. Go to that last link and you don't find "hormesis" discussed at all.
Expect the cherry-picking of studies or anecdotal stories which seem to support hormesis.
It's funny at about 3:40, Jirtle states he didn't believe hormesis was real. It's not. Even going forward 30 years. It's as real as homeopathy. Here's Calabrese "connecting" hormesis and homeopathy at another pseudo-science meeting.
At about 6:20, Jirtle says that he knew chemicals could alter the epigenome, but he was wondering if radiation could. Besides for the fact that this has already been studied (see below), it's should be obvious.
Chemistry works through transferring electrons between atoms and molecules. Ionizing radiation ionizes atoms and molecules (removes electrons).
If reactive oxygen species (ROS) affect something (they strip electrons from other atoms and molecules), expect ionizing radiation to affect it too. ROS contain oxygen, which has the second highest electronegativity (flourine beats it) of all the elements. The ability (electronegativity) of a SINGLE ROS molecule is in the eV range of energy. A SINGLE X-ray photon is typically defined to start in the 100 eV energy range, and a SINGLE gamma ray photon is typically defined to start in the 100 keV. So in a direct one-to-one comparison, a photon will strip away many more electrons (cause more damage) than a ROS molecule. If ROS affect the epigenome, then radiation will.
Health physics deniers (of the doubt-mongering type) typically point to all the ROS in the body and claim that any low level radiation is minor compared to that. But the ROS cause damage and the low level radiation only adds to it. How minor the excess radiation is depends on the dose.
They go on to discuss certain phenomena which have been studied, they are not new.
First, epigenetic responses to radiation have been studied.
Second, anti-oxidants have been studied.
Thirdly, the response of the immune system to radiation has been studied.
(The above studies are just examples to show that they aren't discussing anything new. There are many more such studies.)
Calabrese is "shocked" that radiation affects people with immune system related disease (like arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, etc.) even though we've known this for decades. If he searches real hard, he'll find that radiation was used for epilation (hair removal). And it worked!
But then we realized that the people giving the radiation and their patients showed increased incidence of cancer compared to before the introduction of radiation. So we shifted to alternative procedures.
At about 23:00, they seem to shift off the topic of radiation effe....
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