| As endurance records for time spent in space continue to be broken, astronauts and cosmonauts are at increased risk for prolonged radiation exposure. With the prospect of even longer missions, such as a voyage to Mars, or the establishment of a lunar colony, the development of mathematical models to predict the effects of radiation exposure is of vital concern. Scientists from the Russian Federation, using data from Chernobyl and from the Soviet/Russian nuclear weapons test program, have published research that.
The Russian authors, E.E. Kovalev and O.A. Smirnova, contend that mathematical models that combine three levels of adverse radiation effects, the population level, the organism level, and the body's critical system level, offer the greatest promise in predicting the effects of radiation exposure. Their basic hypothesis is that there exists a subpopulation of individuals who demonstrate so-called hypersensitivity to both acute and chronic irradiation; and that this subpopulation is responsible for the inadequate extrapolation from high to low radiation doses on health effects.
These findings are available in a recently published report, Estimation of Radiation Risk Based on the Concept of Individual Variability of Radiosensitivity, published by the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute (AFRRI), in collaboration with the Research Center of Spacecraft Radiation Safety (RCSRS), Moscow, Russia.
Foreword to the report.
A limited number of copies are available directly from AFRRI, 8901 Wisconsin Avenue, Bethesda, MD 20889-5603, USA. Telephone: 011-301-295-9228.
This and other AFRRI publications are available to qualified users from the Defense Technical Information Center, Attention: OCP, 8725 John J. Kingman Road, Suite 0944, Fort Belvoir, VA 22060-6218; telephone: (703) 487-4650. AFRRI publications are also available from university libraries and other libraries associated with the U.S. Government's Depository Library System.
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