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Permissible Dose: A History of Radiation Protection in the Twentieth Century
How 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.
- GenresHistoryNonfictionScience
189 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 6, 2023
I wish I had a copy of this book when I worked as a radioactive materials inspector.
December 12, 2016
This is a dry, impartial history of the history of radiation protection standards under the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and it's predecessor and successor agencies. What they were, and how they got that way. I don't think it was intended to rouse the reader to fury, but in my case, that is what it did.
I have always been skeptical of the "linear, no-threshold" dose-response theory in radiation protection; not that I know it is wrong, but how can we know it is right, when talking about very small doses applied over a long time? In other fields, like pharmacology, it is well known that small doses may have very different effects than large ones, for example. In fields like exposure to radiation in space environments, we are often talking about doses which may be significant over a year, but which come in very small doses every day. So I was curious to understand how this theory came in to being.
To find that when it was adopted, it was well known by most experts to be wrong -- but they knew it was conservative, and there was no agreement on what was right -- was interesting. To find that they nevertheless set the radiation standards based on it, because while probably conservative, it was not hard to comply with those limits, was surprising. To find that every time there was a public concern over radiation, they simply tightened the standard WITHOUT CHALLENGING THE MODEL was shocking.
But what truly angered me was the discovery of how ONE person, who was on these committees, shaped so much of the debate. John W. Gofman was a name I recognized; I'd read an anti-nuclear pamphlet of his back in high school and been very disappointed at the one-sided, exaggerated view of radiation dangers even then. To find that this one person had created, out of very little data, the perception that radiation standards needed to be tightened, not just once, but over and over, and then gone on to campaign against nuclear power because in the past, there had been emissions (legal at the time) beyond the now-tightened standards, really angered me. If I hadn't known who this was, I wouldn't have understood the significance of his appearance in the narrative (and the book doesn't discuss his later career at all).
In short, I think this book, if carefully read, gives a great deal of insight in to how thin the foundation is for the risks of low doses of radiation spread out over a long time.
I have always been skeptical of the "linear, no-threshold" dose-response theory in radiation protection; not that I know it is wrong, but how can we know it is right, when talking about very small doses applied over a long time? In other fields, like pharmacology, it is well known that small doses may have very different effects than large ones, for example. In fields like exposure to radiation in space environments, we are often talking about doses which may be significant over a year, but which come in very small doses every day. So I was curious to understand how this theory came in to being.
To find that when it was adopted, it was well known by most experts to be wrong -- but they knew it was conservative, and there was no agreement on what was right -- was interesting. To find that they nevertheless set the radiation standards based on it, because while probably conservative, it was not hard to comply with those limits, was surprising. To find that every time there was a public concern over radiation, they simply tightened the standard WITHOUT CHALLENGING THE MODEL was shocking.
But what truly angered me was the discovery of how ONE person, who was on these committees, shaped so much of the debate. John W. Gofman was a name I recognized; I'd read an anti-nuclear pamphlet of his back in high school and been very disappointed at the one-sided, exaggerated view of radiation dangers even then. To find that this one person had created, out of very little data, the perception that radiation standards needed to be tightened, not just once, but over and over, and then gone on to campaign against nuclear power because in the past, there had been emissions (legal at the time) beyond the now-tightened standards, really angered me. If I hadn't known who this was, I wouldn't have understood the significance of his appearance in the narrative (and the book doesn't discuss his later career at all).
In short, I think this book, if carefully read, gives a great deal of insight in to how thin the foundation is for the risks of low doses of radiation spread out over a long time.
July 23, 2024
An incredibly dry but incredibly informative book. If you are in this field and want to understand the development of our current regulations, this is the book for you. If you are looking for narrative and commentary, perhaps not.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews