If I'm not wrong, you all might have heard about background radiation. Right?Well, for those who haven't heard about it, background radiation, in simple terms, is any form of energy released by environmental resources like the earth's crust, the atmosphere, cosmic rays, etc. The reason why we call it "background" radiation is that this is the radiation which we don't emit deliberately but still exists.

Since the 1960's, there has been this theory that any radiation carries a certain amount of risk and thus hundreds of billions of dollars are spent all around the world just to reduce the level of radiations. Well this theory's existence has now arrived to an end. This theory has been denied by researchers of Ben-Gurion University (BGU). According to their study, life expectancy is around 2.5 years longer among people living in a relatively higher background radiation. (You can read the complete study results on Biogerontology)

“Decades of scientific theory are potentially being disproven by the remarkable researchers at BGU,” says Doug Seserman, chief executive officer, American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. “These findings might even provide a sense of relief for those who reside in areas in the U.S. with higher-than-average background radiation.”

The evidence to their hypothesis is the lower levels of several types of cancers in people living in he higher end of the spectrum of radiation levels. Among both men and women, there was a significant decrease in lung, pancreatic, colon and rectal cancers. Among men, there were additional decreases in brain and bladder cancers.

Using the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s radiation dose calculator, the researchers retrieved data about background radiation from all 3,129 U.S. counties. The study’s data regarding cancer rates was retrieved from the United States Cancer Statistics. Life expectancy data was retrieved from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington Medical Center.

“It is reasonable to suggest that a radiation threshold does exist, yet it is higher than the upper limit of the natural background radiation levels in the US (227 mrem/year),” the researchers write. “These findings provide clear indications for re-considering the linear no-threshold paradigm, at least within the natural range of low-dose radiation.”

Fun Fact: This means that for so many year we were wasting hundred of billions of dollars to reduce something that was beneficial to us.

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