Radiation and Cancer

Medical Textbooks advice to Clinicians is:-

….as the major adverse effects of radiation exposure are the induction of cancer and genetic problems and because all radiation is harmful and as there is no safe lower threshold of radiation use alternative techniques such MRI and Ultrasound which do not involve radiation exposure…… all radiologists and referring clinicians must strive, a) to keep the radiation to the patient as low as achievable, b) to use up to date equipment c) use alternative techniques such MRI and Ultrasound which do not involve radiation exposure…

The National Academy of Sciences states, there is no safe level of radiation dose. Their researchers said their results indicate that 1 in every 1000 people would develop cancer from a radiation dose of 10 millisievert (mSv), which is the average radiation dose in a single whole-body CT scan.

Note: Most of the ionising radiation received by humans is from X-ray and CT, and imaging on these systems accounts for about 12% of radiation exposure that humans will receive during their lifetimes. Other sources such as sunlight and nuclear fallout, e.g. as the result Chernobyl, account for about only 1%.