I have to say, as a rather humbling follow-up comment to my own assertions, that I read a little bit more just now on the subject: Not only the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), but also most US medical radiation protection standards, and many international experts in the field of radiation oncology, continue to use the "Linear-No-Theshold" risk model for radiation oncogenesis (cancer) in humans, despite that already-mentioned abundance of data showing that individuals living in areas with twice the background rate of radiation do not show any statistical increase in cancer rates. The usual rationale for using a linear cancer risk model, as given in many places including these three
http://www.pnas.org/content/100/24/13761.shorthttp://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull364/36405843745.pdfhttp://www.lwwoncology.com/Textbook/Content.aspx?aid=8101476&postback=1is that the risk level is so low, for low-level radiation exposure, that it is statistically difficult (near impossible) to show in any group of 100,000 or 1000,000 people whether a tiny fluctuation in the population cancer rate is due to some cultural factor (popularity of smoking, for example) or demographic factor or due to the slight difference in background radiation. Studies have attempted to correct for these factors but the result is that any cancer effects from low-level radiation (below 10 milliSievert acute exposure) are lost in the margin of error or statistical noise of the study. To conclude, while recent studies of cellular DNA-repair mechanisms in conjunction with radiation oncogenesis strongly SUGGEST that the Linear-No-Threshold model is bogus (and that the human race has spent several TRILLIONS of dollars in the wrong way as a result of bogus risk-mitigation studies based on the wrong model)... the data are still not conclusive enough to convince a strong majority of scientists (say, 95%) that the LNT model should be abandoned in favor of a saner and more cost-effective risk model for radiation. This is an area where science CLEARLY has an important job to do, and a very specific trillion-dollar question to answer, SOON.
