title: Radiation risk--a Chinese perspective: 1996 G. William Morgan Lecture.
abstract: The great honor of being selected by the Presidents Emeritus Committee of the Health Physics Society as the G. William Morgan Lecturer for 1996 provides me this opportunity to present my lecture at the Plenary Session of the 1996 Health Physics Society Annual Meeting. Under the guidance of Mr. Li Deping, in the late fifties and the early sixties when I began my scientific career, I made a comprehensive literature survey on radiation protection to be aware of this field. Based on this study and on the actual situation in China, I presented the paper "Outline to Health Physics" (Pan 1963), one of the papers I completed in the early times. This gave me a preliminary understanding of the important thoughts of ICRP, NCRP, ICRU and the pioneers of health physics with respect to radiation protection. Preliminary assessment of population dose in China has been done. The natural background radiation sources contribute 93.4% to the total dose, of which is due to radon and thoron progeny. Among the medical exposure from man-made activity, the maximum is from medical exposure (4.21%), the next is from occupational exposure (1.25%), the public exposure contributes about 1.1%. Several practices need to pay special attention: (1) medical exposures, 60.4% of the total increase exposure from man-made activity, (2) the exposure of underground mines, (3) the exposure from coal energy chain, with the sum approximately 100%. The collective dose from nuclear industry contribute 5 x 10(-4). In the coming decade, the doses to the population of China will not significantly increase and may even decrease.
authors.affiliation: Bureau of Safety, China National Nuclear Corp., Beijing.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ziqiang
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D016273:Occupational Exposure; D011210:Power Plants; D011829:Radiation Dosage; D011835:Radiation Protection; D018788:Radioactive Hazard Release