Handbook of Radon.

37. The role of the NRPB.

The NRPB was set up by the Radiological Protection Act 1970 primarily to advise Government on the risks of radiation. Its remit was altered under the Health & Safety Act of 1974 to provide for consultation with the Health and Safety Executive. In essence, its role is as a centre of expertise on radiation, and as a source of advice.

The NRPB, like some other organisations centred wholly or principally upon radiation, have a history of being concerned with (and requiring others to be concerned with) doses that would be considered almost harmless by most normal standards.

Indeed, much of radiological protection is focused on doses that are small compared with those received from the natural background. For decades, radiological protection has benefited from a growing fear of man-made radiation. These fears can be reinforced by the occasional well publicised prosecution under the Ionising Radiation Regulations, and by media coverage of minute releases of radioactivity from nuclear installations.

Despite the availability of readable booklets from NRPB and AEA (see Section 12), little progress seems to have been made in setting the whole subject in perspective.

Against this background, the scale of the radon problem in some countries has not been universally welcomed. Whilst it can be argued that doses from high-level houses are so large that heroic efforts should be devoted to reducing them, a different perspective is possible.

Generally, radon risks are similar to other risks of everyday life, and about which people show little concern. Thus, if all 'ordinary' radon doses can reasonably be ignored, why perpetuate an expensive radiological and policy bureaucracy to pontificate over risks that are smaller?

As an illustration of the diversity of radiological expenditure, in the National Health Service around £500 may be thought justified to reduce dose by 1 sievert. In the nuclear industry up to £150,000 may be sanctioned to avoid the same radiation dose. In part, this diversity continues because of the career politics associated with the nuclear industry.

The simple fact is that radon sits uncomfortably between being a health issue (and in the UK it is of minor importance except for a small number of households) and being a nuclear issue where the doses involved can be so large as to dwarf those from all other sources.

The dilemma for radon experts is clear: should modest radiation doses from housing be accorded a low priority (or even be ignored) as presenting little additional risk to the many others to which people are exposed and accept in their daily lives?

Or should the fact that large sums of money are spent routinely in preventing minute doses of radiation in industry or from discharges to the environment now be questioned? A similar debate has begun over the economic cost of meeting some of the more marginal and idealistic 'clean-up' campaigns.

A perspective may be gained from the fact that sunbathing on some Cornish beaches for a week may impart a greater dose of ionising radiation than is received from nuclear discharges that are the subject of protest, demonstration and parental anguish. Any cancer risks from too much sunshine would be in addition to those from the ground.

Central to any debate must be that different magnitudes of expenditure may be appropriate in different areas, thus recognising the logical distinction between health and environmental issues (see Section 22).

The most enduring impact of the UK radon debate may be a more widespread appreciation of the attempts by two senior NRPB staff to see emulated in the UK the massive and in part unprincipled program on radon that has been so contentious in the USA.


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