New Developments in our understanding of radiation effects in nonhuman biota; implications for radiation protection: Comparative radiobiology and radiation protection

摘要

Recent advances in our understanding of effects of radiation on living cells suggests that fundamentally different mechanisms are operating at low doses compared with high doses. Also, acute low doses appear to involve different response mechanisms compared with chronic low doses. At the biological level this is to be expected. Chemical toxicity has been known for many years to show these patterns of dose response. Cell signalling and coordinated stress responses appear to dominate acute low dose radiobiology while adaptive responses also become important when the dose is protracted. This means that in situations where cancer induction is not a problem, as is mainly true for non-human biota, the key questions to be addressed involve the effect radiation-induced responses might have on competitiveness or on ecosystem sustainability. Also important is information about the interaction between low level radiation and chemical exposures. This paper discusses our knowledge about low dose radiobiological effects in biota and draws attention to the problem of defining the important questions relevant for the level of organisation being studied.