Wry vhetsases oF EN MR 308 RADIATION STANDARDS, INCLUDING FALLOUT uestion of internal depositions is partly under this heading because the internal depositions may come largely from breathing and drinking. Our recommendations tendto consist oflists of permissible concentrations or radiation protection guides, in air or water. These are in themselevs somewhat secondary standards, very useful ones, as guides to prudent operation. The application of these lists in a rigorous or statutory mannerinstead of going back to the basic dose requirements with respect to the individual can either be very burdensome on the one hand, or actually not restrictive enough on the other hand where various biological concentrating mechanisms intervene between the initial water supplies and the consumption of food after the processing of products through a food chain. Anothersignificant problem not related to standards but to the way we think about them is the natural tendency among the public and perhaps to some extent even in the courts to equate the exceeding of some specific limit with injury to the recipient. Serious problems will enter into the business if radiation protection guides are erroneously used as criteria for determination of either the existence or the extent of injury. In this country radiation protection standards are not based on concepts of establishing permissible doses at levels just below the point of injury. As I understand the present efforts of the Public Health Service, that agency is particularly cognizant of this overall problem of oversimplification of limits and tends to what I call a retrospective assessmentof each case on its own merits. As seen by industry, this approach carried to the limit won't stand up. Industry and the public which rightly attempts to judge the actions of industry must have prospective targets, not retrospective ones. Unfortunately in industry, which is technelogy based here, we tend to equate prospective target with a very simple go, no-go gage or the discrimination of black and white. One almost hears a modern Decatur exclaiming, “Our numbers, may they be always in the right, but our numbers, right or wrong.” The two extreme positions are not vet reconciled. If we accept the principle of acceptable risk in radiation exposure, and there is no alternative today, instead of black and white, we have only infinite gradation of gray from perhaps a black relating to significant overexposure, grading down but never reaching white. It is beyond our wits to quantify such a scale. Yet the attempt has to be made at least to define bands of gray. The three ranges as used by the Federal Radiation Council, I think, are precisely such an attempt. which I have translated into fashionable color terminology with range I being Arcadian gray, range II being Achillean gray, and range IIT being Augean gray. Representative Hosmer. Do you have a color chart with you? Mr. Parker. I am not. able to put precise numbers on these shades of gray but I classify Arcadian gray as pure and clean for the relevant purpose, and Augean gray containing a reference to the wellknownstables of history, and the middle range, if I may clarify that, as I recall Achilles, he was pretty sound but he had a couple of weak spots one on each heel, That is the devivation of these ranges. Publi edueation, or in other words, doing a better job than T can do pictorially in interpreting the shades of gray we have in mind, is still vitally needed and dees not come easily. We look to the Fed- ppgipasaAIREARBREPRONOCesseRPTLAIS