Problems of obtaining risk estimates at low doses

A brief article examines the problems of obtaining risk estimates for the carcinogenic effects of low doses of radiation in man. It is shown that for a fixed population of 2000 people, the uncertainty in fatal cancer risk estimate increases as the average dose received over 40 years decreases. It is also shown that the estimates of risk can be improved by increasing the size of the population, thus stressing the need to pool data for occupational epidemiological analyses. (UK)