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Much uncertainty in predicting cancer deaths from Fukushima radiation

Trying to Tally Fukushima, NYT,  By MATTHEW L. WALD, 19 July 12 “….In the slippery question of “How bad was Fukushima,” two Stanford University researchers have published a paper  that casts the accident in a new light. It still seems hazy, though …… The study’s significance is not clear. The International Commission on Radiological Protection, the body from which the United States draws most of its radiation limits, warned of the limitations  of such predictions in a 2007 position paper.

It said that calculating the collective radiation dose of the whole population and then trying to derive numbers on risks from it presented problems. “Collective effective dose is not intended as a tool for epidemiological risk assessment,” the group said, “and it is inappropriate to use it in risk projections.”

“The aggregation of very low individual doses over an extended time period is inappropriate, and in particular, the calculation or the number of cancer deaths based on collective effective doses from trivial individual doses should be avoided,” that paper added…

August 6, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Fukushima 2012, health