Cytogenetic Damage at Low Doses and the Problem of Bioindication of Chronic Low Level Radiation Exposure

INTRODUCTION The problem of correct estimation of low-level exposure chronic irradiation biological consequences is one of the most important unsolved problem. It is actual for radiobiology and radioecology at the moment. The development of new concept of radiation protection of human and biota should be based on clear understanding of low-level chronic exposure biological consequences. The estimation of biological consequences of low-level chronic exposure is the difficult complex problem, including many unsolved problems of modern biology. In our report we shall stop only on some phenomena which we investigated and which, in our opinion, induced increased yield of cytogenetic damage in conditions of low dose chronic irradiation, namely: – non-linearity of the dose-effect dependence; – increased (per dose unit) efficiency of irradiation at low dose-rates; – non-linear (synergistic, antagonistic) effects of combined action of the different nature factors; – genome induceable replicative instability; – radioadaptation phenomenon.