Implications of the ''man-rem concept''

Because the measurement of doses to individuals in the population is impractical under present circumstances, any assessment of individual or group risks must be obtained indirectly through the use of some kind of dose-averaging procedure. The alternative solution is necessarily through an administrative process such as that traditionally used by national and international protection bodies, where the effect is taken to be related to both the dose and the number of people who are exposed. The product of the average dose and the number of people exposed has led to the development of the ''man-rem concept'' as a means for computing the presumed hazard through the use of a single parameter. The assumptions necessary for the development of risk criteria are not always explicitly stated. First, it is assumed that the probability of a specified injury to an individual is proportional to the average absorbed dose he receives in the pertinent organ of his body. Second, it is assumed that one can compute the dose received by each individual in the pertinent organ from the limited amount of experimentally determined information about the radiation