For years there has been a question which has bugged me, to which I
have never received a satisfactory answer.
The dose response curves that we use rely to a large extent on data
from the Japanese atomic bomb survivors. Absorbed dose is expressed in
Gy, ie J / kg. Japanese people, (Sumo wrestlers excluded), are (and I
apologise for any racial stereotypes :-) generally small compared to,
say, a North American raised on a diet of MacBurgers.
For equal whole body doses, do large people have a greater morbidity
than small people (to quote another thread running at this moment, if
big people have more cells the LNT hypothesis would suggest that they
are more prone to radiation induced cancers)?
Does it imply that the dose response derived from bomb survivors would
underpredict the response to a more obese population?
Regards,
Martin
Martin Phillips
Plant & Environmental Radiological Measurements Team
BNFL Magnox Generation Division
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