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Comment by heywoodlh | Hacker News Reader

Does our radioactivity play a factor in human life expectancy (I obviously don't mean in lethal or higher-than-average doses)? For example, does being around the normal amount of human radioactivity improve our health or is it a detriment? Or is it a nonfactor?

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Well there's also this concept [0]:

> Radiation hormesis is the hypothesis that low doses of ionizing radiation (within the region of and just above natural background levels) are beneficial, stimulating the activation of repair mechanisms that protect against disease, that are not activated in absence of ionizing radiation.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis

Normal Ramsar background radiation is ~260 mSv while 100mSv should be dangerous according to common knowledge.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11769138/

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/lance2/

"Those who lived in higher radiation areas also were found to live the same life expectancy as those in lower radiation areas, while all residents of Ramsar had the same life expectancy as those in neighboring areas with less background radiation."

My understanding is at a pop-science level, but it seems like once again the chemical energy overpowers the radioactive energy. The "free radical theory of aging" blames mitochondria for a lot of the damage our cells sustain. Mitochondria generate an incredible voltage gradient which generates and throws off a trickle of oxidative radicals which go on to damage the rest of the cell, occasionally even damaging your DNA, damage which slowly accumulates over the decades of your life.

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