Implications for human and environmental health of low doses of ionising radiation

The last 20 years have seen a major paradigm shift in radiation biology. Several discoveries challenge the DNA centric view which holds that DNA damage is the critical effect of radiation irrespective of dose. This theory leads to the assumption that dose and effect are simply linked - the more energy deposition, the more DNA damage and the greater the biological effect. This is embodied in radiation protection (RP) regulations as the …