Abstract

Purpose

The projected existence and magnitude of carcinogenic effects of ionizing radiation at low doses and low-dose rates is perhaps the most important issue in radiation protection today. Studies of childhood cancer and natural background radiation have the potential to throw direct light on this question, into a dose range below a few tens of mSv. This paper describes the studies that have been undertaken and their context, discusses some problems that arise and summarizes the present position.

Conclusions

Many such studies have been undertaken, but most were too small to have a realistic chance of detecting the small effects expected from such low doses, based on risk projections from higher exposures. Case–control or cohort studies are to be preferred methodologically to ecological studies but can be prone to problems of registration/participation bias. Interview-based studies of the requisite size would be prohibitively expensive and would undoubtedly also run into problems of participation bias. Register-based studies can be very large and are free of participation bias. However, they need to estimate the radiation exposure of study subjects using models rather than individual measurements in the homes of those concerned. At present, no firm conclusions can be drawn from the studies that have been published to date. Further data and perhaps pooled studies offer a way forward.

中文翻译：

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儿童癌症和自然本底辐射研究综述

摘要

目的

预计低剂量和低剂量率下电离辐射的致癌作用的存在和程度可能是当今辐射防护中最重要的问题。对儿童癌症和自然背景辐射的研究有可能直接阐明这个问题，剂量范围低于几十毫西弗。本文介绍了已经进行的研究及其背景，讨论了出现的一些问题并总结了目前的状况。

结论

已经进行了许多此类研究，但大多数研究规模太小，无法根据较高暴露的风险预测来检测如此低剂量所预期的微小影响。病例对照或队列研究在方法上优于生态研究，但可能容易出现登记/参与偏差问题。达到必要规模的基于访谈的研究将非常昂贵，并且无疑还会遇到参与偏差的问题。基于登记册的研究可能规模非常大，并且不存在参与偏差。然而，他们需要使用模型而不是在相关人员家中进行单独测量来估计研究对象的辐射暴露。目前，从迄今为止已发表的研究中还无法得出确切的结论。进一步的数据和或许的汇总研究提供了前进的方向。