Joshua Gilder, a visiting fellow at the Lexington Institute, published a terrific opinion piece in the October 25, 2005 issue of the Washington Times titled “Chernobyl exposed.” He correctly identifies that the biggest cause of health effects from the accident was the fear that was instilled into the population based on ignorance and misguided government policies.
He also provides a concise summary of the scientific fallacy of something known as LNT – the Linear, No Threshold theory of dose response. This “theory”, which is more accurately described as an assumption, is the basis for many of the world’s regulations of radioactive materials and nuclear reactor operations limits, yet its value in predicting health effects is disproved in a number of comprehensive studies.
Not only is the LNT inaccurate, but also it leads to enormous costs as projects are forced to take action to control radiation exposures that are orders of magnitude below the naturally occurring background radiation in many of the world’s most healthy places.
