Methodology issues in epidemiological assessment of health effects of low-dose ionising radiation.
Epidemiological assessment of the health effects of exposure to low-dose ionising radiation is limited by the need for very large sample sizes and by various sources of bias that may generally affect epidemiological studies. Motivated by the present focus on low-dose effects, the following questions are examined: what are the strictly unavoidable limiting factors in the epidemiological methodology; what is its resolution limit in terms of effect size and what can be done to obtain further supportive evidence from the data?
Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. lagarde@rerf.or.jp
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D015982:Bias; D015986:Confounding Factors, Epidemiologic; D004307:Dose-Response Relationship, Radiation; D004781:Environmental Exposure / Q000032:analysis; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods; D015340:Epidemiologic Research Design; D062665:Epidemiological Monitoring; D006283:Health Physics / Q000379:methods; D009381:Neoplasms, Radiation-Induced / Q000453:epidemiology*; D011829:Radiation Dosage; D011832:Radiation Injuries / Q000453:epidemiology; D011839:Radiation, Ionizing; D011874:Radiometry / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D018570:Risk Assessment / Q000379:methods*; D012307:Risk Factors; D018401:Sample Size