RERF 1971 Studies of the Mortality of A-Bomb Survivors. According to ICRP/ NRPB this study is "pivotal" in establishing a dose/response model for radiation. ... keystone data, according to nuclear apologist Marvin Goldman, are derived from this elegant and careful study.	These studies are completely silent about risks from internal isotopes, since both the study group and the control group lived in the bombed cities and thus were equally exposed to ingesting and inhaling fallout isotopes. Early reports of cancer incidence at Hiroshima were seriously out of line with those later used to set risk factors. (ICRP 1965) The high dose data points established from the exposed group has been extrapolated in a linear fashion to the low dose region. This extrapolation has been widely criticised: Goodhead (Bramhall 1997) calls the extrapolation "a large region of uncertainty". Wright (Edwards 1997) questions the relevance of bomb survivors' data. Sternglass (Sternglass 1981) Busby (Busby 1995, Busby and Scott-Cato 2000) and Busby 2000a) Gofman (Gofman 1990) and A. Stewart (Stewart 1982, 2000) all attack it on various grounds.
Kneale Mancuso Stewart 1981 Cancer mortality in Hanford workers	shows a 15 - 20-fold error in risk factors derived from RERF 1971
Nussbaum 1994 (pp657-9)	a compendium of criticisms
Nussbaum 1998	a further overview which concludes that "contrary to widely publised claims that current regulation of population exposures are far too restrictive and thus unnecessarily costly for the radiation industries, the aggregate of radiation epidemiological evidence suggests that current standards are inadequate to protect public health."
STOA 1998	Wide ranging criticisms presented to the European Parliament in February 1998
Burlakova 1996	shows that the linear model is false, and that disease data follows a biphasic curve with proportionally large effects at low dose.
Hohenemser and others 1986 have drawn attention to the hot particle problem:-	"To our knowledge the biological effects of 1 - 2µm beta-emitting particles are not well described. Average dose calculations may not be valid for predicting consequences. [permanent lung deposition implies] a substantial zone of cell lethality at short distances followed by an annulus of very high but non-lethal dose..."
Busby 1995 includes a theoretical model (the Second Event theory) of sequential local radiation dose.	NRPB (Cox 1996) has failed to refute it (as shown in Busby 1997c, Busby 1998c)
Seymour C. Mothersill C. and Watt D. E. 1999	"...same criteria of absorbed dose do not apply to low level radiation protection issues."; "... still we have not agreed on how best to predict the actual biological effectiveness of a known radiation field with tolerable accuracy without resorting to empirical techniques even for the simplest of mammalian cells. Amid this chaos, the validity of the fundamental concepts must surely be suspect, even if only intuitively? To make a realistic prediction of damage using absorbed dose, we have to resort to clever tricks ..." etc etc etc

The burden of proof remains on ICRP/ NRPB.

Back to introduction
Other categories of evidence:
2) epidemiological studies showing a risk not accounted for by NRPB/ ICRP model
3) studies which are said to demonstrate that there is no unappreciated risk but which have demonstrable flaws or which do, in fact, show an excess risk.
4) animal studies.
    References