Permissible Dose: A History of Radiation Protection in the Twentieth CenturyHow much radiation is too much? J. Samuel Walker examines the evolution, over more than a hundred years, of radiation protection standards and efforts to ensure radiation safety for nuclear workers and for the general public. The risks of radiation—caused by fallout from nuclear bomb testing, exposure from medical or manufacturing procedures, effluents from nuclear power, or radioactivity from other sources—have aroused more sustained controversy and public fear than any other comparable industrial or environmental hazard. Walker clarifies the entire radiation debate, showing that permissible dose levels are a key to the principles and practices that have prevailed in the field of radiation protection since the 1930s, and to their highly charged political and scientific history as well. |
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AEC's AEC/NRC April atomic bomb Atomic Energy BEIR report BEIR-III BEIR-V cancer Chernobyl Clean Air Act Commission concern controversy debate December design objectives diation effects of radiation effluents emissions EPA's exposure to radiation fallout February Gofman and Tamplin guidelines health effects hearings Hiroshima ICRP iodine Ionizing Radiation issue January June leukemia levels licensees low as practicable low-level radiation man-rem Mancuso March millirems misadministrations Nagasaki National Academy NCRP NRC Records NRC's nuclear industry nuclear plants nuclear power plants Nuclear Regulatory Commission Nucleonics Nucleonics Week occupational exposure October Office patients permissible doses physicians plutonium population exposure Press programs proposed public health radiation effects radiation exposure radiation hazards radiation protection radiation releases radiation safety radiation standards radioactive radionuclides radium reactor received recommendations regulations regulatory staff rems revisions Science scientific scientists Seaborg Sellafield sources Sternglass Taylor testing Three Mile Island tion U.S. Congress Washington whole-body x-rays