Correspondence and reports: includes an ICRP Committee 4 Meeting Working Paper (Nov/Dec 1981) relating to Pochin 's 'Distribution of Individual Doses to Workers'; an ICRP paper by Pochin 'Does the observation of an annual dose limit constrain the level of mean annual dose rates?' the discussion at the 'Index of Harm', (29 Mar 1984); related letters between Pochin and radiation protection specialists at NEA (OECD), Paris; TVA; National Institute of Radiation Protection, Stockholm; Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories, Ontario, and Oak Ridge Associated Universities, Tennessee

1981-1987

1 file

The concept of radiation `detriment', as the means of describing a quantity characterising the whole radiation harm, includes the `detrimental' consequences of exposure, in terms of health effects, which can be measured in respect of the deleterious effect of the radiation dose on body tissues. EEP's paper (ICRP Pub. No. 27) analysed the use of the reduction of life expectancy (as related to normal life expectancy) as an index of harm. For radiation protection purposes, it has now been ascertained that the `detriment' is dominated primarily by fatal malignancies; the induction of severe hereditary effects in the first two generations is also apparent.