Indian estimates of risk from the exposure of internal organs by the BEIR V risk model

ICRP estimates of lifetime risk from exposure are obtained using primarily the data from Japanese atom bomb survivor studies with the relative risk (RR) and US National Institute of Health risk models. Risk coefficients of these two models depend on age at exposure but are independent of time after exposure. In a somewhat different approach, the US National Research council's Committee on Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation (BEIR V) uses age-at-exposure, time-after-exposure and dose dependent relative risk model for risk estimates for the US population. In the present work, estimates of lifetime risk from exposure for organ sites leukaemia, respiratory organs, digestive organs, breast and remainder organs as a single group are obtained using the BEIR V risk model with the baseline cancer and life table data for the Indian population. The Indian estimates of lifetime risk are compared with the estimates of the BEIR V Committee for the US population and also with those of ICRP by the RR model. The results show that the lifetime risk based on BEIR V model for the Indian and US populations are lower than the corresponding risk estimates of the RR model. Indian estimates of lifetime risk by BEIR V model are lower than those for the US population by a factor of 3. (author)