Andy invited me to join a list server he’d started called “MR RSO” which stood for “Medical and Research Radiation Safety Officer.” My background was Nuke Power Radiation Safety, so this would help expose me to the ins and outs of the Medical and Research side of Rad Safety.
There was another Rad Safety online group which was bigger, but more contentious. They liked to argue over something called “Radiation Hormesis,” the idea that radiation exposure in low doses is actually beneficial. This is an ongoing discussion to this day.
One of the early discussions I opined on in MR RSO concerned exposure to dental X-Rays. In the exact opposite idea to Radiation Hormesis, somebody did a study purporting to show that dental x-rays, which are fairly low and innocuous, are more dangerous than higher radiation doses. The study stated that babies born to mothers who had dental x-rays while pregnant suffered from lower birth weight. I asked the poster for more info or a link to the study, and once I took a look the bad science was immediately obvious. It turned out that the moms in the study had severe gingivitis, which required more dental work and therefore more x-rays. So which caused the low birth weight? The gingivitis, the x-rays, or some other confounding effect? I was surprised that even one of the Radiation Safety professionals on the list server couldn’t see the faulty logic of blaming low birth weight on a few dental x-rays.
Shocked in the Suburbs 