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On Monday, NASA officially opened an application window for the next generation of American astronauts it hopes to send to the International Space Station, lunar orbit and eventually to Mars. But to find the best candidates for dealing with the harsh levels of radiation in space and on the Red Planet, the agency may want to consider looking beyond the borders of the United States for applicants.
[...] For years now, scientists have been studying residents of Ramsar, a town in northern Iran that is believed to have the highest levels of naturally occurring background radiation for an inhabited area. Levels up to 80 times the world average (PDF) have been measured in town, yet studies of the few thousand people living in the area show rates of lung cancer are actually below average. In fact, research shows that a gene responsible for the production of white blood cells and so-called "natural killer cells" that attack tumors was more strongly expressed among the population.
[...] there may be no need to engage in controversial "editing" of human genetics to create radiation-resistant astronauts because there might already be good prospects in a few corners of the world.
[...] Besides Ramsar, the beaches near Guarapari, Brazil, also exhibit very high levels of natural radiation. People in Yangjiang, China, live with radiation levels three times the world average but have below-average cancer levels, and the story is the same in Karunagappally, India.
Unfortunately, none of the people from these areas would be eligible for the program NASA is now hiring for -- the agency is only looking for American applicants. So who in the United States might be best suited for withstanding the most cosmic radiation?
Paging residents of Hanford, WA...
(Score: 1) by bart on Wednesday December 16 2015, @11:27AM
But let's not spread the news. It upsets the green church.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bradley13 on Wednesday December 16 2015, @11:49AM
Radiation hormesis [nih.gov], exactly, you beat me to it. Look at the chart on radiation values in this article. [world-nuclear.org] 2.5 millisieverts is average, normal background radiation. 50 millisieverts is the lowest dose at which there is any evidence of increased cancer rates. 100 millisieverts is the value at which cancer rates definitely begin to increase. During that range (so, a factor of 20 to 40), cancer rates decrease continuously. The idea that they may still be lower at a factor of 80 really isn't very surprising.
A couple of decades ago, some get-rich-quick attorneys figured they would start a class action suit against the nuclear power industry, because of the high cancer rates. Then someone rubbed their faces in a study that showed people working in and around nuclear material and nuclear power plants have lower cancer rates than the rest of the population.
Likely, one would find the same sorts of things in and around Fukushima, but it's not PC, so even if a neutral study is done, the media is unlikely to publicize it.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday December 17 2015, @09:12PM
An interesting hypothesis, but still an unproven effect that, if present, is going to be extremely difficult to detect conclusively since it is a couple orders of magnitude smaller than normal population variance.
And if these particular populations are indeed genetically predisposed to have better anti-cancer defenses, then hormesis is not even a particularly relevant hypothesis.