I actually wouldn't be surprised if our exposure rates are set to being too low for certain ray exposures of specific isotopes. It is not exactly surprising that radioactive exposure can help fight cancer.... that is the basis behind radiotherapy after all. I feel ill saying this... but they both had valid points. The media overstates the risks of exposure and political mandates for exposure levels can be driven by that, but ignoring caution is irresponsible and promoting this incorrectly could remove necessary thresholds. Safety levels err on the low side. A large part of this is because we are not exactly willing to just rigorously double blind test for what a safe level would be with humans over decades. Most people would consider that unethical. If however accidental data points are created as the examples she brings up they can be examined and tested on other animals to see if it could possible hold up instead of being stastical flukes. The Taiwanese in a building were exposed to higher than safe levels of Cobalt-60... but perhaps none of them smoked or any number of other factors could have significantly skewed the results. The same is true for any of these case studies. Specifically and intentionally testing while controlling for other known factors is just outside the bounds of normal medical ethics. So we use what data we do have and err on the side of caution until stronger data can present itself.
ETA: Oh look here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2477708/
The exposure rate was 0.4mSv/year. Everything I can find put non-occupational dose limits at 1mSv/year and occupational dose limits at 20mSv/year when averaged over 5 years. So her claim it was above regulated exposure limits is false. It may have been over regulated
contamination limits for the
building materials, but that is something different than actual exposure limits.
This file has some examples of exposure limits:
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/ToxProfiles/tp33-c8.pdf
Cobalt-60 is specifically used in radiotherapy. So finding out that low level exposure of long periods of time might be beneficial is not too surprising.
Her claim that the media is at fault for this misinformation has some truth to it... but she keeps citing media articles bringing up her points. Then she goes on to talk about Americans willingly taking poisons in the same way she is accusing the media of talking about radiation. Her point about the Japanese survivors likely having better cancer rates because of their exposure is again false. For one, their increase in exposure rates due to the plant issues has been rather miniscule for most anyone but the plant workers. Americans typically have higher background radiation.
I would rate her article as basically right, with a giant heap of attack the liberals/media thrown in even though the fears appear to be equal across political isles.
