AAPM Report No.58 -Reply

[Charles Willis <CAW@nrc.gov>]

Ron,

You are right, of course.  No one knows what the effect would be of a million
person-rem spread uniformly over a population of a million people.  The AAPM
answer is consistent with current estimates, but to present the estimate as a hard
fact is poor practice.  Even using the BEIR-V models, the estimated number of
cancers would depend on a variety of factors such as dose rate, age and gender of
the irradiated population, the "natural" cancer rate of the irradiated population, etc.
 The differences between  populations are significant, even within the "linear,
non-threshold" model; i.e. the age adjusted cancer mortality rate of men in
Hungary is reported to be over 6 times that of the women in Albania.  Furthermore,
it seems significant that, in what comes across as the strongest defense it could
mount, the NCRP has downgraded the linear, non-threshold idea from a
"hypothesis" to a "model."

Charlie Willis
caw@nrc.gov
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