UNSCEAR 2012 Report

1 UNSCEAR 2012 Report SOURCES, EFFECTS AND RISKS OF IONIZING RADIATION United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic RadiationSOURCES, EFFECTS AND RISKS OF IONIZING RADIATIONUNSCEAR 2012 ReportReport to the General AssemblySCIENTIFIC ANNEXES A AND BAnnex A. Attributing health effects to ionizing radiation exposure and inferring risksAnnex B. Uncertainties in risk estimates for radiation-induced cancerSOURCES, EFFECTS AND RISKS OF IONIZING RADIATIONU nited Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic RadiationUNSCEAR 2012 Report to the General Assembly with Scientific AnnexesScientific AnnexesUNITED NATIONS New York, 2015 NOTEThe Report of the Committee without its annexes appears as Official Records of the General Assembly, Sixty-seventh Session, Supplement No.

2 46 (A/67/46).The designations employed and the presentation of material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or country names used in this document are, in most cases, those that were in use at the time the data were collected or the text prepared.

3 In other cases, however, the names have been updated, where this was possible and appropriate, to reflect political changes. United Nations, December 2015. All rights reserved, publication has not been formally on uniform resource locators and links to Internet sites contained in the present publication are provided for the convenience of the reader and are correct at the time of issue. The United Nations takes no responsibility for the continued accuracy of that information or for the content of any external NATIONS PUBLICATIONS ales No.

4 : 978-92-1-142307-5eISBN: 978-92-1-057798-4iiiCONTENTSPageReport of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation to the General Assembly .. 1 Scientific AnnexesAnnex A . Attributing health effects to ionizing radiation exposure and inferring risks .. 17 Annex B . Uncertainties in risk estimates for radiation-induced cancer .. 91 Glossary .. 309 Contents Chapter PageI. Introduction .. of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiationat its fifty-ninth session.

5 3A. Completed evaluations ..3B. Present programme of work .. accident following the great east-Japan earthquake and tsunami in 2011 .. exposure from electricity generation and an updated methodology forestimating human exposures due to radioactive discharges .. of radiation exposure on children .. effects from selected internal emitters .. of low-dose-rate exposures of the public to natural and artificialenvironmental sources of radiation .. mechanisms of radiation actions at low doses ..6C. Future programme of work.

6 7D. Administrative issues .. Report .. health effects to radiation exposure and inferring risks .. in risk estimates for cancer due to exposure to ionizing radiation ..10 Appendices I. Members of national delegations attending the fifty-seventh to fifty-ninth sessions of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation .. staff and consultants cooperating with the United Nations ScientificCommittee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation in the preparation of its scientificreport for 2012 ..15 Report of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation to the General Assembly vChapter I Introduction the establishment of the United Nations Scientific Committee on theEffects of Atomic Radiation by the General Assembly in its resolution 913 (X)

7 Of 3 December 1955, the mandate of the Committee has been to undertake broad assessments of the sources of ionizing radiation and its effects on human health and the In pursuit of its mandate, the Committee thoroughly reviews and evaluates global and regional exposures to radiation, and also evaluates evidence of radiation-induced health effects in exposed groups, including survivors of the atomic bombings in Japan and people exposed after the reactor accident at Chernobyl.

8 The Committee also reviews advances in the understanding of the biological mechanisms by which radiation-induced effects on human health or on non-human biota can occur. Those assessments provide the scientific foundation used, inter alia, by the relevant agencies of the United Nations system in formulating international standards for the protection of the general public and workers against ionizing radiation;2 those standards, in turn, are linked to important legal and regulatory instruments.

9 To ionizing radiation arises from sources such as natural backgroundradiation, including from radon; medical diagnostic and therapeutic procedures; nuclear weapons testing; electricity generation, including by means of nuclear power; events such as the nuclear power plant accidents at Chernobyl in 1986 and following the great east-Japan earthquake and tsunami of March 2011; and occupations that increase exposure to artificial or natural sources of radiation. _____ 1 The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation was established by the General Assembly at its tenth session, in 1955.

10 Its terms of reference are set out in resolution 913 (X). The Committee was originally composed of the following Member States: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czechoslovakia (later succeeded by Slovakia), Egypt, France, India, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (later succeeded by the Russian Federation), United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and United States of America. The membership of the Committee was subsequently enlarged by the Assembly in its resolution 3154 C (XXVIII) of 14 December 1973 to include the Federal Republic of Germany (later succeeded by Germany), Indonesia, Peru, Poland and the Sudan.