Determining Radiation Dangers

Report Outline
Debate Over Safety Questions
Evolution of Exposure Standards
Scientific Basis for Controversy
Special Focus

Debate Over Safety Questions

Recent Incidents Causing Public Alarm

More than half a century has elapsed since women laced their eye shadow with radium to make their eyelids glow, and today any educated person would regard such a practice with horrified condescension. Yet 50 years from now, if some experts are to be believed, the routine diagnostic X-ray may be seen — like radioactive mascara — as the barbaric custom of a bygone era. According to these experts, accumulating evidence suggests radiation is much more dangerous at low levels of exposure than generally appreciated, and the U.S. government therefore should lose no time in tightening standards.

Other equally reputable experts remain convinced that low-level radiation poses a negligible health hazard, and these experts advocate retention of current standards. At stake in the growing controversy over low-level radiation are not only widespread medical practices but also certain military doctrines and, above all else, the future of the nuclear power industry.

Most of the studies on which radiation critics rely involve complex methodologies and produce ambiguous results. What gives the critics strong credibility with the public is not so much the studies as a large number of incidents which seem to call the vigilance of authorities into question. The accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pa., made a particularly strong impact on public perceptions. Extensive press and television coverage in the days following the March 28 accident made tens of millions of Americans more fully alert to the danger that escaping radiation holds for large populations.