Radiation Risks in PerspectiveCRC Press, 2006 M10 20 - 207 pages Public misperception of radiological risk consistently directs limited resources toward managing minimal or even phantom risks at great cost to government and industry with no measurable benefit to overall public health. The public's inability to comprehend small theoretical risks arrived at through inherently uncertain formulae, coupled with an ir |
Contents
Risky Business | 1 |
Scientific Guesswork | 25 |
No Safe Dose | 47 |
Uncertain Risk | 65 |
Zero or Bust | 79 |
Misplaced Priorities | 109 |
Avoiding Risk | 129 |
Radiation from the Gods | 149 |
Hold the Phone | 167 |
PR Campaign Proportion Prioritization and Precaution | 183 |
Glossary | 193 |
Index | 197 |
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Page 96 - In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.
Page 44 - All substances are poisons; there is none which is not a poison. The right dose differentiates a poison and a remedy.
Page 174 - When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.
Page 8 - We use risk assessment to mean the characterization of the potential adverse health effects of human exposures to environmental hazards. Risk assessments include several elements: description of the potential adverse health effects based on an evaluation of results of epidemiologic, clinical, toxicologic, and environmental research; extrapolation from those results to predict the type and estimate the extent of health effects in humans under given conditions of exposure; judgments as to the number...
Page 28 - In addition, there is continuing surveillance of the information by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) and the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP), groups mainly concerned with setting standards for maximum permissible exposure.
Page 17 - Committee uses the term risk management to describe the process of evaluating alternative regulatory actions and selecting among them. Risk management, which is carried out by regulatory agencies under various legislative mandates, is an agency decision-making process that entails consideration of political, social, economic, and engineering information with riskrelated information to develop, analyse, and compare regulatory options and to select the appropriate regulatory response to a potential...
Page 12 - ... suggestive evidence of carcinogenicity but not sufficient to assess human carcinogenic potential; data are inadequate for an assessment of human carcinogenic potential; and not likely to be carcinogenic to humans).
Page 8 - ... clinical, toxicologic, and environmental research; extrapolation from those results to predict the type and estimate the extent of health effects in humans under given conditions of exposure; judgments as to the number and characteristics of persons exposed at various intensities and durations; and summary judgments on the existence and overall magnitude of the public health problem.
Page 17 - Risk management, which is carried out by regulatory agencies under various legislative mandates, is an agency decision-making process that entails consideration of political, social, economic, and engineering information with risk-related information to develop, analyze, and compare regulatory options and to select the appropriate regulatory response to a potential chronic health hazard. The selection process necessarily requires the use of value judgments on such issues as the acceptability of risk...
Page 63 - The effects of age and lifestyle factors on the accumulation of cytogenetic damage as measured by chromosome painting. Mutat. Res..