Ne Sho Crraae Lt. oad 316 RADIATION STANDARDS, INCLUDING FALLOUT which emphasizes method must necessarily fit poorly at one extreme or the other. Standards which define basic criteria, while permitting needed latitude in the methods employed, apply equally well to all users. Identifying end point, not method, is the key issue. The present efforts of the NCRP are concentrating on this point. Related to the problems resulting from incorporating methodology into standards is the imparting of the same validity and weight of law into such secondary standards as is warranted in the case of primary or basic standards. As an example, in controlling the internal deposition of radioactive materials in humans the principal standard is the limitation of the amount of a radioactive material in an organ of interest. Since two principal modes of entry into the body are breathing and drinking, recommendations of the NCRP include a listing of permissible concentrations of radionuclides in air and water (9). Inclusion of such secondary standards as a guide to prudent operation is often helpful. Application of such secondary standards in a rigorous or statutory manner in lieu of assessment against primary dose standards can be unduly burdensome or expensive on the one hand, or not restrictive enough on the other hand, where biological concentrating mechanisms in the human food chain can intervene. There is a natural tendency among the public and perhaps even in the courts to equate an exceeding of a specific permissible limit with injury to the recipient. Serious problems will result if radiation protection guides are erroneously used as criteria for determination of existence or extent of injury. Radiation protection standards in this country are not based on concepts of establishing permissible doses at levels just below the point of injury. Knowledgeable medical interpretations and decisions in the courts should provide adequate resolution of this potential problem. As I understand the present efforts of the USPHS that agency is particularly cognizant of the problem of oversanctification of numerical limits and tends toward retrospective assessment of each case on its own merits. As seen by industry this approach, carried to the limit, would be untenable. Industry, and the public which attempts to judge its actions informally and fairly must have prospective targets. Unfortunately, a technology-based industry tends to equate prospective target with a go, no-go gage or the discrimination of black from white. One almost hears the modern Decatur exclaiming, “Our numbers, may they be always in the right, but our numbers, right or wrong.” The two extreme positions are not yet reconciled. With the principle of acceptable risk in radiation exposure, instead of black and white there is a definable black for significant overexposure, and below that, infinite gradations of gray down to but never quite reaching white. It is beyond the wit of man to quantify such a scale—there is, for example, no gray that is 10 times lighter or darker or grayer than another gray. Yet the attempt has to be made at least to define bands of gray. The three ranges as used by the Federal Radiation Council are precisely such an attempt which I would translate into color terminology as— Range I: Arcadian gray. Range II: Achillean gray. Range III: Augean gray. Public education on the acceptability of a given radiation risk or, pictorially, the interpretation of a particular gray is vitally needed. It cannot be achieved simply. Neither is it helped when prominent scientists, erroneously accepted by the public as expert in this particular field, express palpably different views on the prudence or radiation safety of actions or plans in the atomic energy field. Such differences come from socioeconomic rather than scientific interpretations. Here the Federal Radiation Council, more readily than the NCRP, could provide the Nation with authoritative or at least broadly considered value judgments. In spite of these problems, on balance, radiation protection standards over the past 20 years do seem to have served this country well. Aggressive research in support of refined establishment of basic protection principles and standards and resourceful codification of these principles should permit this statement to be repeated 20 years hence. A very brief look at the industrial exposure experience is convincing that an effective set of controls has been in force throughout the rapid expansion of the atomic energy business in this country in the last 20 years. = HSURUR RARE ROTC yyyhde AVES CeBapeSLRURESagegets ae