Estimates of radiogenic cancer risks.

Abstract

A methodology recently developed by the U.S. EPA for estimating the carcinogenic risks from ionizing radiation is described. For most cancer sites, the risk model is one in which age-specific, relative risk coefficients are obtained by taking a geometric mean of the coefficients derived from the atomic bomb survivor data using two different methods for transporting risks from the Japanese to the U.S. population. The risk models are applied to estimate organ-specific risks per unit dose for a stationary population with mortality rates governed by 1980 U.S. vital statistics. With the exception of breast cancer, low-LET radiogenic cancer risk estimates are reduced by a factor of 2 at low doses and dose rates compared to acute high dose exposure conditions. For low dose (or dose rate) conditions, the risk of inducing a premature cancer death from uniform, whole body, low-LET irradiation is calculated to be 5.1 x 10(-2) Gy-1. Neglecting nonfatal skin cancers, the corresponding incidence risk is 7.6 x 10(-2) Gy-1. High-LET (alpha particle) risks are presumed to increase linearly with dose and to be independent of dose rate. High-LET risks are estimated to be 20 times the low-LET risks estimated under low dose rate conditions, except for leukemia and breast cancer where RBEs of 1 and 10 are adopted, respectively.