Absorbed Dose Is Meaningless When Considering Interactions at the Cellular and Molecular Levels.

The upshot is that "dose" is an effectively meaningless term yet the industry's regulators have no other terms with which to assess and quantify risks. Reassurances about "trivial doses" are revealed as empty. Comparisons of external dose received while flying are not comparable to internal dose when considering low dose, short range radiation effect microscopically on DNA especially from exposure to high density alpha radiation. In other words, where hot or warm particles or Plutonium or Uranium are located in body tissue or where sequentially decaying radionuclides like Strontium 90 are organically bound (e.g. to DNA) “dose” means nothing. This is massively significant. Official radiation risk agencies universally quantify risk in terms of dose. Their public reassurances fall to the ground. They can no longer compare nuclear industry discharges with the 2 millisieverts we get every year from natural radiation, or the cosmic rays you’d receive flying cross-country.

ICRP is the source of official radiation risk estimates used by governments, the NRC and regulators world-wide. The science on which ICRP bases its advice is invalid for certain types of exposure - those involving radioactivity inside the human body, especially where the elements become bound in body tissue and even more especially where they have a chemical affinity with DNA, like Uranium and Strontium which mimic calcium.

The essence of the problem lies in ICRP's use of the concept of absorbed dose for all types of radiation exposure. Absorbed dose is an average of energy expressed in terms of Joules per Kilogram mass of tissue. This is valid for external radiation, like X-rays and cosmic gamma rays, but is obvious nonsense for alpha radiations, which travel a very short distance but do a lot of local damage. There are many types of exposure where the radioactive decay of a particle or an indiviual atom causes a very high density of ionizations, killing or mutating an individual cell, while giving no dose at all to other cells. The ICRP approach assumes that the energy is averaged across the whole body or a whole organ.
Officially, and according to supporters of nuclear power and radioactive weaponry, the scientific shortcomings of ICRP's position are acceptable because there is no epidemiological evidence that risk estimates based on ICRP are out of line with reality. This is why these people put so much energy into denying the health effects of Chernobyl. It's also why it is vital to track the fallout from Fukushima and its long-term effects on public health.

ICRP admits that their absorbed dose system is used because of it's utilitarian value, even though it does not take into account low dose, short range radiation. Dr. Busby on utilitarianism and low dose: "One alpha tract across a cell will give you a dose of half a seivert and will probably kill the cell. Now what's going to happen when you put a particle in there which is solid plutonium or uranium which produces this radioactivity intrensicly, you're getting very high level of local high density radiation. The external risk assesment model doesn't represent the risk from that kind of exposure." ..."I do lots of court cases and when the nuclear industry tries to use the ICRP model in court they lose." http://vimeo.com/15398081

For densely ionising radiation (charged particles from neutrons and alpha-particles) and low doses of low LET radiation, the frequency of events in most cells is zero, in a few it is one and extremely exceptionally more than one. The value of energy imparted in most individual cells is then zero but in the hit cells it will exceed the mean value by orders of magnitude. These large differences in the energy deposition distribution in microscopic regions for different types (and energies) of radiation have been related to observed differences in biological effectiveness or radiation quality.

CERRIE: DOSE IS “MEANINGLESS”

"… There are important concerns with respect to the heterogeneity of dose delivery within tissues and cells from short-range charged particle emissions, the extent to which current models adequately represent such interactions with biological targets, and the specification of target cells at risk. Indeed, the actual concepts of absorbed dose become questionable, and sometimes meaningless, when considering interactions at the cellular and molecular levels."
from CERRIE (Government's Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters) Majority Report Chapter 2 Risks from Internal Emitters Part 2 paragraph 11. See www.cerrie.org for full report. http://www.cerrie.org/

For radiations emitted by radionuclides residing within the organ or tissue, so-called internal emitters, the absorbed dose distribution in the organ depends on the penetration and range of the radiations and the homogeneity of the activity distribution within the organs or tissues. The absorbed dose distribution for radionuclides emitting alpha particles, soft beta particles, low-energy photons, and Auger electrons may be highly heterogeneous. This heterogeneity is especially significant if radionuclides emitting low-range radiation are deposited in particular parts of organs or tissues, e.g. plutonium on bone surface or radon daughters in bronchial mucosa and epithelia. In such situations the organ-averaged absorbed dose may not be a good dose quantity for estimating the stochastic damage.

ICRP throws in the towel
At a meeting in Stockholm, 22 April 2009, Dr Jack Valentin, Scientific Secretary Emeritus of the ICRP admitted that ICRP's risk model could not be applied to post-accident exposures because the uncertainties were two orders of magnitude.
The next day, Deputy Director of Strålsäkerhetsmyndigheten, Carl-Magnus Larsson also said the ICRP model could not be used to predict the health consequences of accidents. He added that for elements like Strontium and Uranium which bind to DNA national authorities would have the responsibility to assess the risks. Another SRM member said that the Secondary Photoelectron Effect was well recognised, also that in 1977 the ICRP had considered a weighting factor ”n” for elements which bind to DNA but had not implemented it.

http://llrc.org/