Practical ICRP-60 quantities

Historically, the quantities used to measure the amount of ionizing radiation have been based on gross number of ionizing events in a defined situation or on gross amount of energy deposited. These approaches omit consideration of the discontinuous nature of the process of ionization, but are justified empirically by the observation that the gross quantities relate fairly well with the resulting biological effects. The commission, therefore, continues to recommend the use of macroscopic quantities. Future developments may, however, show that the use of other quantities, i.e. microscopic quantities (based on statistical distribution of events in a small volume of material, corresponding to dimensions of biological entities such as nucleus of the cell or its molecular DNA) may be better