Answer to Question #9694 Submitted to "Ask the Experts"
Category: Policy, Guidelines, and Regulations — Regulations and GuidelinesThe following question was answered by an expert in the appropriate field:
Q
My question has to do with health effects of low levels of radiation exposure associated with the Fukushima reactor accident. Fox News
interviewed a person who said that any level of radiation is harmful.
Does the Health Physics Society (HPS) endorse this position? Does the
HPS endorse the linear no-threshold (LNT) model for realistically
calculating latent cancer deaths from low levels of radiation (i.e.,
below 10 rem)? I have been following the debate over these issues and
have found different opinions. At one extreme, there is a theory
(hormesis) that asserts that low radiation levels are beneficial and
actually produce health benefits. There have been papers by the Electric
Power Research Institute and the University of Massachusetts School of
Public Health (BELLE newsletter) asserting that a hormetic effect may
exist with low levels of radiation exposure. A recent paper by Professor
Bernard Cohen, University of Pittsburgh, claims that data show that
people exposed to high levels of radiation from radon gas actually have
lower cancer death rates than those exposed to low levels. There was
also a recent presentation by a French scientist to the Advisory
Committee on Nuclear Waste in which he argued that the LNT model
overstates health effects (i.e., cancer) at low radiation exposures. The
other extreme is the opinion stated on Fox News that any dose, no matter how small, is harmful.
A
The Health Physics Society (HPS) does not support the
position that any level of radiation is harmful, nor does it endorse using the
linear no-threshold (LNT) model to
calculate latent cancer deaths from low levels of radiation. To quote an HPS position statement (PS010-2, 1996)https://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q9694.html
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