Three months ago, you reported on the French National Academy of Science's forthcoming report on the health effects of low doses of ionising radiation (This Week, 2 September). A radiation biologist from London called the report "stupid". Is that so?
The International Commission on Radiation Protection based its assessment of risk from high doses of radiation on epidemiological surveys. The ICRP gave particular emphasis to survival after the atom bombs dropped on Japan, in which the dose rates were high. In other data with lower dose rates the risk is smaller. Moreover, the main reason why the ICRP increased its estimates of the carcinogenic effect of radiation in 1990 was the introduction of risk projection models. Data have been recently published which are inconsistent with the model chosen by ICRR
The extrapolation from high to low dose is also controversial. Firstly, cell repair is much more effective in cells which ...
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