Judgement in Achieving Protection Against Radiation by Lauriston S. Taylor IONIZING RADIATION AS A TOXIC AGENT

Ionizing radiation has been known to man for nearly eighty-five years and for only a few weeks less than that time it has been recognized that if people are exposed to enough ionizing radiation they may suffer injury of an obvious and definable nature. What is not known is whether there is some lower limit to the exposure below which man will not suffer injury and above which he will. There is nothing especially unusual about this state of affairs, except for one characteristic: compared with most other possibly injurious agents, ionizing radiation (referred to hereafter as radiation) has alw.iys been a part of our natural environment. Even though recognized as a part of the environment, there is no known way in which its presence can be completely eliminated or even significantly modified or counteracted. Man has always lived in a somewhat hostile environment. But the great difference between man and other animal life is that in most situations man has been able to learn to live with, to control, to modify, and, in some instances, to eliminate environmental hazards.