Radiation Safety Standards

The US government has standards in place to protect the population from these harms, but currently there are efforts to weaken these standards.

Low-level radiation increases the risks of developing negative health outcomes down the line, not immediately, so there are multiple models for determining health harms for radiation at low levels. One model is called the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) model, which states that the health risks from radiation increase proportionally as the level of radiation increases. LNT is simple to explain: the more radiation you’re exposed to, the higher your risk of developing cancer – and there is no threshold below which there is no risk: even the tiniest dose of radiation creates some risk of cancer. LNT has been at the core of radiation protection standards for many decades, and has been repeatedly reassessed and reaffirmed by the world’s leading radiation science institutions, including the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, the International Commission on Radiological Protection, and even the United State’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

Yet despite all this, opponents of LNT prefer other models, which would allow the public to be exposed to higher levels of radiation exposure. And even using the LNT model, the US government has a long history of underestimating radiation risks, and setting standards too weak. The more scientists have learned about low-dose radiation, the more their estimates of the risk per unit dose have tended to increase, yet the NRC has not updated in step with the science.