Minimising hazards from radiation medicine practice

Any risk to the public and the individual must be kept in perspective if society is to derive benefits from the use of ionising radiation. Much diagnosis in medicine depends on radiological and radioisotopic procedures and a major portion of the treatment of cancer is reliant on radiation therapy. The medical use of radiation is of great benefit to the individual, and may be life saving, and these benefits far outweigh any hazards in the use of radiation when medical radiation is properly applied. Nevertheless there remains the requirement to be on guard against inappropriate, sometimes unnecessary, radiation exposure