From Scientific Evidence to Radiation Protection: A Perspective of Four Decades

Abstract

I have had the good fortune to have been involved in a wide spectrum of radiation protection activities - instrument development, dosimetry and biokinetics, environmental radioactivity and biological effects (these four, the "evidence" side of my title), and developments in practical radiological protection. In this short presentation, I shall highlight just some of these involvements First will be the measurements of fallout and natural radioactivity that in 1959 started me in the business of radiological protection; second will be the R and D on tritium-related matters that occupied much of my hands-on research career through the 1960s and 1970s with AECL at Chalk River; and the final topic will be the studies involving the application of collective dose in radiological protection. The first two are examples of the R and D around the world that now supports the complex system of protection recommended by the ICRP. The third raises fundamental issues in the protection system, related to the assumption of linearity of response to dose, to individual variability and to the uncertainties in predictions of exposures and doses over long times The current rapid advances in biological understanding of genetics and disease, while resolving some of these issues, may well lead to a more complex approach to protection, with a concomitant need for new directions in R and D.