title: ["Epistemic Negotiations" and the Pluralism of the Radiation Protection Regime: The Determination of Radiation Protection Standards for the General Population in the Early Years After World War II].
abstract: Radiation protection standards for the general population have constituted one of the most controversial subjects in the history of atomic energy uses. This paper reexamines the process in which the first such standards evolved in the early postwar period. While the existing literature has emphasized a "collusion" between the standard-setters and users, the paper seeks to examine the horizontal relationship among the standard-setters. It first examines a series of expert consultations between the United States and the United Kingdom. Representing a different configuration of power and interest, the two failed to agree on the assessment of genetic damage and cancer induction whose occurrence might have no threshold and therefore be dependent on the population size. This stalemate prevented the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), established in 1950, from formulating separate guidelines for the general public. Situations radically changed when the Bikini incident in 1954 led to the creation of more scientific panels. One such panel under the U.S. Academy of Sciences enabled the geneticists to bridge their internal divide, unanimously naming 100 mSv as the genetically permissible dose for the general population. Not to be outdone, ICRP publicized its own guidelines for the same purpose. The case examined in this paper shows that the standard-setting process is best understood as a series of "epistemic negotiations" among and within the standard-setters, whose agendas were determined from the outset but whose outcomes were not.
authors.forename: Toshihiro
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Higuchi
mesh_terms: D004739:England; D049673:History, 20th Century; D007564:Japan; D011835:Radiation Protection / Q000266:history* / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000592:standards; D014481:United States