1. The report provides valuable insight and explanation of how human health effects of radiation can be evaluated, and how it might be updated.
2. Has it been made clear that it does not include the effects of fear of radiation and maybe other aspects of well-bring as defined by WHO? I am not suggesting that it should, but that a clarificaiton might be useful as to whether it does or not.
2. It might also be useful to include explicit discussion of how radiation deteriment compares with other measures of detriment usedin other areas such as health protection from chemicals, again to put the document into context. This would then support the determination of optimisation of overall safety or protection where other hazards are present alongside the radiological. It also fits with providing a balanced perspective on the health risks of radiation (Line 218).
3. Para 7. L270 – 272. It would be helpful to explain why detriment can no longer be used for retrospective risk assessment, except for individuals.
- Former members of ICRP have done this in various studies in the past, so to introduce now that it cannot be done calls into question the results of those previous studies and the decisions made on the basis of those calculations. (See, for example, assessments of the health effects from the Windscale fire releases.)
- ICRP 103 was clear to say, “Specifically, the computation of cancer deaths based on collective effective doses involving trivial exposures to large populations is not reasonable and should be avoided.” It appears now that this statement has been extended to include all retrospective doses, not just the trivial. It would be helpful to see explained the basis for this extension.
- It providing the explanation, it should be noted that ICRP 103 failed to define what it meant by trivial. In the general social sense, what counts as trivial depends on the circumstances and does not warrant a quantitative definition; but when it is being used to distinguish when a concept can and cannot be used for protection purposes – a technical consideration -, a quantitative definition would seem to be useful, or at least examples providingof how the distinction can be made between trivial and non-trivial.
- Since effective dose is not to be used, how does ICRP recommend in future to carry out retrospective risk assessment for populations? It is hard not to continue to build on the work already done on detriment.
- Clearly the best information available should be used, e.g. on age and sex distribution, and the distribution of factors that you would take into account retrosepctive assessment of risk to an individual. Of course the result would still only be an expectation of harm, but that is explicit in any risk calculation. You merely have to add up the sum of lots of individual calculations. It is hard to see how that addition makes the result wrong. Furthermore, one could assess the uncertainties in the result for a population in much the same way as you would for an individual, so there is no technical obstruction.
4. It might be helpful to include and reference discussion from the recently approved Use of E report, for issues in point 3 above and wider matters.
5. How long before we see detriment determined in the context of protection of the environment?
Nice system for submitting comments!