Long-Term Consequences of the Linear-No-Threshold Dose-Response Relationship for Chemical Carcinogens

U.S. Government agencies have adopted a linear-no-threshold dose-response relationship for chemical carcinogens, and have set up a Carcinogen Assessment Group (CAG) to determine the proportionality constants in these relationships. Their results are summarized for the carcinogenic elements Be, Cr, Ni, As, and Cd. It is shown that when effects are integrated over ～10⁵ years, an atom of these elements in the ground has a reasonable chance (10^-4-10^-1)of being ingested orally by a human. From this it is shown that, over this time period, producing electricity by coal burning causes 320 fatalities/GWe-yr and all coal burning in the United States causes 74,000 fatalities/year. Commercial use of these carcinogenic elements causes the following numbers of fatalities/yr: Be–900, Cr–87,000, Ni–10,000, As–62,000, and Cd–230,000. Use of CdS and GaAs photovoltaics would cause 2200 and 66 fatalities/GWe-yr, respectively, and production of construction materials for photovoltaic arrays would cause 11 fatalities/GWe-yr through use of coal. The calculational methods are derived from those used in risk assessments of radioactive wastes, and their questionable aspects apply equally to those assessments. It is shown that, contrary to present beliefs, it is much safer to dump these elements into rivers than to bury them in the ground, and by far the safest procedure is to dump them in the oceans.