Abstract
Watanabe et al. [1] (hereafter referred to as WMHY) used A-bomb survivor data from the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) Life Span Study (LSS) Report 12 (available online at http://www.rerf.or.jp) and mortality rates for Hiroshima and Okayama Prefectures [2] to create standardized mortality ratios (SMR) for LSS cohort members residing in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing. WMHY divided cohort members into three radiation dose categories: very low dose ( 0.1 Gy, HD). At issue are the men in the VLD category, who experienced higher than expected deaths due to cancers compared with prefectural rates (note that, for brevity, we discuss only the solid cancer results). WMHY concluded that the increased cancer deaths among the VLD were due to underestimated neutron doses and/or unaccounted-for residual radiation exposures. We find their conclusions to be implausible and believe that the data show it is far more likely that the observed risks among the VLD are due to nonradiation factors. The reasons are briefly summarized below.
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